Maintaining grid reliability is a crucial responsibility of grid operators. Outages in medium voltage (MV) grids, commonly caused by cable damage from excavation work and joint failures, disrupt customer service and divert skilled technicians from other important tasks. To prevent power failures, Alliander developed the Smart Cable Guard (SCG), an online sensor system designed to localise partial discharges in joints and cables that precede these occurrences.
Thanks to the integrated artificial intelligence-powered platform Guardian, Alliander’s operators can assess early warning signals and take appropriate action. Since the installation of 2300 sensor systems in the most critical MV grids, more than 250 outages have been prevented and recovery time from fault has been reduced by 20%.
