Specialist Services

Solution

HES mobilised a team of 2 specialist engineers to South Australia to commence investigation. Due to the nature of the fault, pre-location using resistance was ruled out, and due to the length of cable, arc reflection would not be applicable.

Our team used their expertise and skill and decided to utilise the Impulse Current Method and Decay Method for pre-location. This method produced a pre-location error of approximately 1%, which meant still surveying an area of +2km area, listening for the breakdown initiated by the surge generator/thumper. Coupled with inconsistent and incomplete breakdowns as the surge generator was operating on the upper voltage limit and poor sound produced by just using a DC voltage and relying of the discharge of the stored energy from the capacitance of the healthy and faulty conductor connected in parallel and high background sound levels from highway traffic made this an extreme challenging fault. By the end of the week, HES engineers were able to confidently identify a 5km stretch of cable, and produce a defined list of recommendations and plan for fault pinpointing