Welcome to Fault Red

Detecting, Locating, and Managing Faults on Electric Utility Systems

FaultRed is developing a system that automatically detects, precisely locates, and instantly reports arcing faults on power lines. It does this without connecting to power lines, thereby enabling it to monitor all arcing faults on all power lines in its coverage area, rather than only monitoring faults on a single section of a single power line.

These faults may be either partial discharge faults or more serious outage faults that result in the activation of protective systems. Sporadic partial discharge faults may result from a tree branch brushing against a power line when the wind is blowing, indicating the need to schedule a tree trimming crew to the area. Continuous partial discharge faults may identify a contaminated insulator requiring cleaning or replacement. An outage fault may be a short but powerful electromagnetic burst resulting from a toppling utility pole.

Our system consists of smart sensors installed throughout the utility’s distribution grid at a spacing of about 10 miles, with each sensor covering all power lines and components within 100 square miles. These sensors listen for the radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic emissions produced by arcing faults, including the weak emissions of a new partial discharge to the very powerful emissions of a breaking power line.

These smart sensors send their collected data to a FaultRed central computer, located in the utility’s control room, for data analysis and reporting. The resulting information appears as a “heat map” of RF emissions consisting of a variety of red dots whose size indicates the strength of the detected fault. If we overlay this heat map onto a geographic map like Google Earth, we can zoom in to identify the actual location where the RF emissions were generated as well as the utility poles, roads, and terrain in the area.

This system will reduce both the frequency and duration of power outages throughout a utility’s distribution grid. If a major storm comes through, resulting in wide-scale outages and many downed power lines, our system will log each fault as it occurs, providing its exact location so that crews can be efficiently directed to the most critical faults first, thereby restoring power to the highest priority locations in the shortest possible time.

During quieter times, maintenance crews can be sent to the exact location of each partial discharge fault so that all can be repaired before they cause system failures.

In summary, the features that set us apart include:

1. Grid-wide vs. single power line orientation.
2. Precise fault location vs. estimates, predictions or no information at all.
3. Detects and locates both partial discharge and outage faults.
4. Conforms to all smart grid standards.
5. Operates synergistically with all previously installed fault detection devices.
6. Our proprietary technology is covered by patent 10,175,286