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Cable Monitoring

Our solutions to monitor and optimize your assets

Maximizing the utilization of cable assets is both crucial and demanding. It is important because cables should be able to transmit as much power as possible to meet fluctuating demands in different markets and environments – especially now that power transmission needs are evolving thanks to electric cars and the generation of green energy.
It is also vital that everything possible is done to avoid cable failures, as they can be very costly – not only in terms of the repair costs involved but also in terms of lost revenue and reputational damage. If there is a failure, it is also essential to locate and rectify it as quickly as possible. The service agreements we offer at NKT are a great solution for reducing outage times, and these can be complemented by online monitoring systems.
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Maximizing the utilization of your assets

NKT has over 100 years of experience in the cable business. We run large test labs, where we subject our cables to rigorous testing in order to assess the quality of the materials, as well as the mechanical and electrical properties. These tests also enable us to define the monitoring and optimization solutions we offer our customers.
We work closely with a number of suppliers of sensor systems, such as NKT Photonics, but also with a variety of innovative start-ups that together form a wider framework. We then integrate the data, analyze it and draw conclusions to help our customers maximize the utilization of their cables.
Here at NKT, cable monitoring and optimization only come to life when they provide clear, actionable conclusions – conclusions that benefit our customers with improved reliability and increased revenues.
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Asset monitoring

Helping you monitor your assets

At NKT, we offer a wide range of solutions enabling our customers to monitor their cable assets. Our systems will monitor temperature, vibration, strain and even vessel movements using our AIS tracking solutions.
  • DTS (Distributed Temperature Sensing): Measures temperatures along a cable up to 100 km away. The system can be programmed to trigger alarms, for example to detect hotspots on the cable or rapid temperature changes.
  • DAS (Distributed Acoustic Sensing): Can detect vibrations (acoustically) along a cable in order to identify whether excavation or manual digging work is being carried out, whether the cable is free-spanning and whether or not it is buried. This enables action to be taken to stop external damage or to start re-burying the cable. It can also be used to pinpoint the exact location of a fault if the cable breaks.
  • Strain measurements are used to measure the tensile forces on the cable, for instance when it exits a J-tube or in areas where it is free-spanning. This makes it possible to ensure that the cable forces and movements are within specified limits so as to prevent damage and avoid shortening the service life of the cable.
  • AIS monitoring is used to monitor the vessel traffic in a specific area, such as along the cable route. Alerts can be set to trigger if there is unusual vessel activity in the vicinity of the cable. As a result, it is then possible either to contact a vessel to prevent it from damaging the cable or to use this information following an outage to see which vessel may have caused the outage. >> Read more about AIS monitoring
  • Integration, training, Service – NKT provides a full range of services to help our customers integrate these monitoring solutions into their existing operations systems.

Asset optimization

Helping you optimize your assets

Want to know the key to getting the most out of your cable monitoring? Integrate the data into an expert system. That way you can draw the right conclusions and implement the right measures. We are in the middle of digitizing our networks – so the data you collect today may not be useful right now, but with future insights and knowledge they will provide great value. Here at NKT, we are constantly collecting data from various customers and the experience we gain from this will be beneficial for all our customers.
The solutions we currently offer for asset optimization include RTTR and DoB.
  • RTTR (Real Time Thermal Rating): Predicting the future temperature development of the cable at a certain current. This allows our customers to overload their cables at certain intervals – for instance, when there is a big difference between the price of electricity in different markets.
  • DoB (Depth of Burial): Calculating the burial depth of the cable using temperature data and data about the surrounding environment. This allows our customers to ensure that their cable is buried at all times, avoiding damage to the cable and minimizing the number of off-shore surveys to check burial depth, thus saving costs.

Contact

Get in touch to learn more about our cable monitoring solutions.

Stefan Persson

Head of Cable Monitoring Solutions
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