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As the largest owner and operator of transmission lines in New York, the New York Power Authority (NYPA) must monitor its 1,460 circuit miles of transmission lines so they can be protected and maintained. As extreme weather events become more common and the risk of physical attacks on the grid grows, we have taken a proactive approach to monitoring our transmission lines, allowing us to react quickly and maintain the performance of our system. Traditionally, transmission operators have relied on cameras, a variety of sensors, drones, helicopters, and human inspection to monitor their infrastructure. These methods are difficult to deploy at scale and often provide less detail than we need to maximize system performance.
NYPA’s commitment to providing New Yorkers with clean, reliable power drove us to explore better ways to manage our system, making it more efficient during blue-sky conditions and more resilient during the harshest events.
Through the 2021 “NYPA & Israel Smart Energy Challenge,” we identified Prisma Photonics, a Tel Aviv-based company offering power grid monitoring and preventative solutions enabled by fiber-optic sensing. The technology utilizes distributed acoustic sensing to detect potential threats to the system, including weather conditions, electrical faults, and human sabotage. The technology, known as PrismaPower, can relay real time information to NYPA’s control center so we can respond quickly.
In the winter of 2021, we implemented PrismaPower on a 35-mile stretch of transmission lines between Gilboa and Fraser. These lines climb the Catskill Mountains, exposing them to some of the harshest winter conditions in the state, including very low temperatures, significant snowfall, and powerful winds. These lines made an ideal testbed since they are vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather, such as line galloping, sagging, and high winds, while also facing issues that can impact any transmission line regardless of location, including flashovers, short circuits, partial discharges, vegetation strikes, and vandalism.
Over the two-year test period, sacollected data that showed the impacts that weather conditions and sabotage could have on the grid. After analyzing the data, NYPA gathered several valuable use cases for PrismaPower, including:
• Informing a live dashboard displaying iced lines
• Optimizing maintenance by identifying towers with high partial-discharge levels
• Detecting sabotage, which NYPA lineworkers simulated by climbing towers
• Detecting high winds and wildfires
Other utilities that own and operate transmission lines may find value in deploying advanced sensing technologies to monitor their systems. By installing technologies that better visualize the condition of the grid, transmission operators can enable the power system to become more reliable and resilient and ensure that clean energy can be efficiently moved throughout the state, keeping prices and emissions low. We will continue to build on the lessons learned from our partnership with Prisma Photonics and invite all of New York’s utilities to explore similar technologies as they pursue their operational and climate goals.
Solutions like Prisma Photonics’ PrismaPower fall under the category of Grid-Enhancing Technologies (GETs). GETs include sensors, power flow control devices, and analytical tools that help move more power through existing transmission infrastructure. GETs can defer or negate the need for new transmission infrastructure, saving both time and money. By reducing the timeline and cost to increase its transmission system capacity, New York can be better prepared for a clean energy future. NYPA is excited to continue exploring how GETs can support New York’s climate goals through the NYPA AGILe Lab and future field tests. We welcome collaborating and looking forward to sharing lessons learned as they become available.