Transmission-grade prediction on a submarine cable link

The challenge: incipient faults on critical transmission assets

A North American transmission operator runs critical transmission assets, including a submarine cable link carrying several hundred megawatts. Faults on assets like these are among the most expensive events in any transmission system: locating and repairing them can take weeks, and every day offline matters for the region’s supply.

The operator wanted to know whether faults could be seen coming — with as long a warning horizon as possible, and without installing anything new.

Submarine-cable fault prediction from existing sensors

The collaboration began as a research demonstration project, applying Eneryield IntelliView® to historical measurement data from the cable.

On the strength of those results, Eneryield IntelliView® went into service in October 2021, monitoring cable, reactor and transformer banks — using the sensors the operator already had.

Transmission fault prediction results

• Nine faults predicted in advance in continuous service
• Warnings up to three weeks ahead of the fault
• Every warning delivered with predicted cause and likely source

Why warning time matters on transmission assets

Transmission is where warning time is worth the most: vessels, crews, spare parts and outage windows can be scheduled instead of scrambled. And it is proof that Eneryield IntelliView® works at transmission scale, on the sensors a TSO already owns.