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Lumiker shares the development performed in 2012 of Current Monitoring Technology.

The use of optical current transformers for measuring currents connected with conventional communications fibers opens up unconventional possibilities for the operation of underground cables. A system on a 115kV cable with distances of 12km has been developed and implemented. The cable’s nominal currents together with the screen currents at the grounding points have been measured, and this represents a paradigm shift in the management of buried cables, providing maintenance, discrimination and fault location.

The quick development of optical communications on single mode optical fibers, is opening applications for the use of such fibers, as sensors of magnitudes of great relevance for the electricity sector.

In the case of the current, this magnitude is fundamental for developing new applications, either because new information is provided that until now was very complex to obtain, such as predictive maintenance on cable or the location of the point of failure, either because improves the possibilities over existing ones, in this case, differential protections that provide security of use to the installation.

The deployment of the CAMOS system on an TSO cable is demonstrating this new approach. They are deploying 42 OCT (Optical Current Transformer), over distances of 12 kilometers.

They are considered very low measures, completely oriented to maintenance, where the precision of the measure and the ability to extract precise information for them, working in the Cloud, to obtain useful information for the network operator.

Short circuit situations have also been considered, where the discrimination of the fault, and the quick and truthful location of the point of the fault is the key to increase the service time of the installation.

We will soon publish how we evoled to CAMOS200