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EZ-RESTORE- Trouble Shooting Underground Power Cable Faults

There is a strong trend within the utility industry to make trouble shooting of underground power cable faults less time consuming, shorten restoration times in order to achieve a more favorable SAIDI index and to reduce the number of future cable faults as a result of particular sectionalizing methods, which have proven to cause additional faults especially on bare concentric cables.

Most trouble shooting situations involve one of three commonly applied methods, checking of fault indicators, Hipot testing of cable sections or re-closing / re-fusing. All these methods require the trouble man to go to each transformer, which is time consuming, especially in back-lot situations.

In a typical situation the EZ-RESTORE™ allows a trouble man from one vantage point to quickly and easily identify and isolate a faulted span or section of underground cable in order to restore service as quickly as possible. The EZ-RESTORE™ provides an alphanumeric readout to identify the location of the fault in relation to the 2 closest transformers. The EZ-RESTORE™ is the first and only tool worldwide, which displays the relevant trouble shooting information in alphanumeric form and not in form of a TDR trace, which would require interpretation by the operator. The basis is a patented algorithm, which together with a proprietary software interprets an ARM* generated and digitized fault locating trace.

The use of an ARM* based sectionalizing approach eliminates the need to have to go to each transformer. Typically the trouble man will connect the EZ-RESTORE™ at the first transformer from the riser poll and "shoot" to the normal open point. In case where this section contains 6 or more transformers it should be broken up in 2 sections with 3 to 5 transformers each. In this situation the trouble man hooks up in between and performs 2 tests, shooting back to the riser poll and shooting to the normal open point.

The EZ-RESTORE™ is a fully self contained, battery operated and weatherproof unit. The entire test sequence is microprocessor controlled and completed via 2 push buttons. The alphanumeric display will indicate the fault by placing its distance footage in between the 2 transformers, which are nearest to it.