Temperature sensing aids power efficiency

The Lios DTS product series has been carefully designed and thoroughly tested targeting reliable performance and smooth operation in industrial environments.

As demand for electricity continues to grow, so do the challenges to power companies and power grids.

The liberalisation of power supply markets continues apace, resulting in the reorganisation of national and international networks.

Events of the past few years - including large-scale blackouts and shortfalls in major markets, and the ongoing addition of alternative sources to existing networks - point up the need for improvements to existing infrastructures.

Temperature monitoring is a key factor for the optimisation of underground power transmission and distribution installations.

The conductor temperature depends on the load, but other factors such as the thermal soil resistivity, the power line arrangement, adjacent cables and other sources dissipating heat into the surrounding area have an important impact on the performance of the installation.

The Lios temperature monitoring solution is based on using passive optical fibres as temperature sensors, either integrated directly inside a high voltage cable or mounted externally on the cable insulation.

A solution for overhead lines is also available.

In this case the optical fibre is integrated into the core of a phase wire of overhead transmission lines (OPPC).

Up to now, it has been almost impossible to foresee the temperature distribution along the cable route, so that the maximum applicable current load was usually set as a compromise between understanding of operation conditions and risk minimisation.

The availability of industrial distributed temperature sensing (DTS) systems that measure in real time temperatures all along the cable is a first step in monitoring the transmission or distribution system capacity.

The integrated dynamic cable rating (DCR) or also called real time thermal rating (RTTR) solution offer by Lios enables operators not only to continuously monitor the temperature of a high voltage cable circuit in real time, but to safely use the network capacity to its maximum.

Furthermore it provides the ability to the operator to predict the behaviour of the transmission system on major changes made to its initial operating conditions.

Lios DTS technology has been successfully proven in critical applications like fire detection in road and rail tunnels and special hazard buildings, power cable and aerial transmission line monitoring, in oil and gas exploration for permanent downhole monitoring and for industrial induction furnaces surveillance, where these systems have been equipped in worldwide projects with more than 1500 permanent installations.

Most of these applications are safety relevant and require high reliability and uptime of the sensor system.

The current Lios DTS product series was carefully designed and thoroughly tested targeting reliable performance and smooth operation in industrial environments.

This has been endorsed by the latest statistical field analysis, where an excellent mean time between failures (MTBF) figure of 28 years was reached based on field data of the current DTS product series.

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