POWER and RE+ Tech Supp September 2022 - 38

RENEWING THE PROMISE OF CLEAN ENERGY
RELIABILITY & RESILIENCE
Upgrades to Line Sensors Support
Reliability of the Power Grid
N
ew technologies to monitor
power lines are emerging
worldwide, part of continuing
efforts to harden the power grid and
increase reliability and resiliency. Utilities
and other operators of electricity
transmission and distribution (T&D)
systems have made T&D upgrades
a priority as power outages become
more frequent due to an increase in
the number of extreme weather events
across the world.
Today's monitoring technology
features wireless power line sensors,
cameras, and faulted circuit indicators
that may use advanced detection algorithms
to sense problems on overhead
lines in real time. These systems
also are moving beyond the traditional
methods of using fossil fuel-powered
generators, batteries, or even wind
turbines or solar panels to provide the
power needed for their operation. Instead,
they are adopting " self-harvesting "
technology, drawing operating
power directly from the power line.
These systems can do more than
sense faults. They also may serve as
" eyes in the sky " in more remote areas,
using cameras to discover issues long
before a maintenance worker would be
able in the arrive in the vicinity. These
systems can alert utilities and line operators
to things such as wildfires, enabling
faster deployment of wildland firefighters.
They can spot conditions that could
lead to icing on power cables, or provide
visual confirmation of damage or
other problems along the line.
Several utilities are taking advantage
of new overhead power line sensor
solutions, both in the U.S., Canada,
and elsewhere. Minnesota-based Xcel
Energy last year hired LineVision to
deploy that company's technology
across transmission lines in part of the
utility's territory in Minnesota, Colorado,
and Wisconsin. The project is a
collaboration that includes Oak Ridge
1. Osvaldur Knudsen, CEO of Laki Power, and Bjorn Sighvatsson, the company's head
of manufacturing, talk about the company's power line monitoring equipment during a
meeting with U.S. media members, including POWER, in mid-June. Courtesy: Sigurjon
Ragnar
National Lab, with data collected from
the project being analyzed in a study
on advanced line ratings.
The technology can help alleviate
congestion on power lines, and enable
additional power capacity on those
lines, which in Xcel's case could help
the utility add more renewable energy
to the grid as part of the utility's 100%
carbon-free electricity by 2050 goal.
Xcel, like other utilities that serve areas
of the drought-stricken western U.S.,
also is using sensors to identify areas
of potential wildfire risk, along with
determining when line maintenance
is needed to alleviate grid stress and
help suppress power outages.
New technologies have been developed
to reduce the maintenance required
of the sensor systems, with those
systems themselves hardened to better
withstand extreme weather and other
challenging operating conditions. Several
companies, including Ampacimon
(Belgium), Heimdall Power (Norway),
Gridpulse (Slovenia), Sentient Energy
(California), and more are deploying
38 Supplement to POWER & RE+ 2022
new technologies to enhance grid safety
and reliability, including those sensors
that operate on power " harvested "
from the power line itself.
One example of this self-powering
technology has been developed
by Laki Power, a company based in
Iceland that was named " Innovation
Company of the Year " in 2021 by
Samorka, the federation of energy
and utility companies in Iceland. Osvaldur
Knudsen, Laki Power's CEO,
told POWER during a recent meeting
(Figure 1) at the company's Reyjkavik
headquarters that the company's
products feature Laki's PowerGRAB
electromagnetic energy harvesting
technology, a system of springs, magnets,
and coils, where the magnet and
the coil move relative to each other.
This movement creates a change in
the magnetic flux that produces an
electromagnetic force.
Knudsen said the technology uses
a " cold " power regulation technique
to capture high-voltage powerline current
as a usable low-voltage DC out
POWER and RE+ Tech Supp September 2022

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