MILES better fault location
MILES Better Fault Location is trialling a new way of finding faults on our network which will help us improve our industry leading network reliability. The system helps our field staff pinpoint the location of a fault down to a few metres so they can be fixed faster.
Project-on-a-Page summary
Project data
Start date: 01/08/2020End date: 31/05/2023
Budget: £1,838,000
MILES (named Maintenance Intelligente de Lignes Électrique by its French Canadian manufacturer) is a system which can give a precise location of a fault which has happened on our network. It uses low voltage power quality sensors, voltage drop location algorithms and cloud computing to detect, locate and classify short and long term faults. The system aims to provide pre-fault information to our network control centre so we can react quickly and prevent faults from happening.
This is a significant improvement on current methods, which sometimes involve manually patrolling overhead cables to find the source of a fault.
We’ll run data simulations and test the new system against traditional methods.
Once the technology is proven, the project will work to integrate with our existing network management software.
We’ll run data simulations and test the new system against traditional methods.
Once the technology is proven, the project will work to integrate with our existing network management software.
We will measure success using the following metrics:
- Determine best value of fault location system (when compared to Fault Passage Indicator (FPI) and other existing methods)
- Determine the value of accuracy of fault location (ie: costs of getting 10m, 100m, 1000m accuracy on Underground and Overhead networks)
- Determine how to roll out the Miles system (using existing sensors, and/or procuring additional sensors)