Fault sniffer locates cable faults

New fault location device detects cable errors

Peter Vayhinger drills a small hole into the footpath and inserts the "sniffer" of his handy measuring device into the ground. If the fault sniffer's display shows a high concentration of combustion gases, the search for cable faults has been successful.

Vayhinger is the head of the cable measurement team at the EnBW network operation in Stuttgart. For some months, he and his team have been using the SebaKMT fault sniffer, and he is impressed by the advantages it offers: "This device enables us to locate cable faults under certain conditions without us having to release the network." The "fault sniffer" is easy to operate and represents an additional variant for reliable cable fault locating. When faults are located with the cable test van, all customers connected to the defective operating resource must be isolated or disconnected. This is a time-consuming step. Thankfully, using the fault sniffers means that this is not necessary under certain circumstances in case of known cable faults in the low voltage network.

Experience has shown that 95 percent of errors are located in a sleeve, which can be "sniffed" specifically. To do so, rough pre-location is necessary, for example, by narrowing down the location of the defect using a voltage detector. "The hit rate with this less complex procedure is around 80, which translates into significant time and cost savings in locating cable errors as well as sparing our network customers from switch offs," notes team leader Peter Vayhinger.

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