Transmission Line and Aerial Cable Health-Monitoring with Fiber Sensing

Aerial lines are vulnerable to heating, lightning, galloping and ice. They degrade cables and compromise performance. Sudden failures along these cables are difficult to predict resulting in outages. To address these challenges, we can make use of a fiber optic strand as a sensor. This is a non-intrusive monitoring solution for aerial FO cables including OPGW across long distances.

Here we show how Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing (DFOS) technology tracks temperature and strain along the line. This technology can use two types of light scattering to detect subtle temperature (environmental and within the conductor) and strain (i.e. cable loading) changes. They pinpoint sections of the cable that are subject to anomalies. The DTSS solution successfully identified high-strain zones likely caused by ice accumulation or weakening of the cable from lightning strike and temperature degradation. This sensing allowed the operators for targeted maintenance and proactive intervention. This approach reduced surveillance costs and improved asset longevity by detecting potential failures before they occurred.
Sensitivity to temperature changes is used for dynamic line rating based on the distributed temperature sensors (DTS). In this fashion the use of fiber optic provides a passive sensing technology to monitor our aerial FO networks and transmission lines.