In order to supply southern Germany with green electricity from large wind farms in the north of the country in the future, underground extra-high voltage cables are being laid over hundreds of kilometres across the country. HIGHVOLT has developed an innovative monitoring system to continuously monitor the underground power transmission. It uses Azure cloud services to process large amounts of data in real time, enabling faster and more accurate localisation of cable faults. In collaboration with SoftwareOne, a solution architecture was designed that also allows for the future integration of AI algorithms for predictive maintenance.
Germany plans to become climate-neutral by 2045, and the share of renewable energies is to increase to 80% by 2030. Environmentally friendly electricity is mainly produced by large wind turbines on land and at sea in the north of the country. However, conurbations, especially in southern Germany, have a high demand for energy, even as large conventional power plants are gradually being phased out. To ensure a sustainable and secure energy supply in all regions for the long term, the successful remote transmission of renewable energies is essential for the success of the energy transition in Germany and worldwide.
HIGHVOLT is a partner of many transmission system operators in Germany and abroad and one of the leading suppliers of measuring, testing and monitoring systems for power grids worldwide. The company supports the expansion of the high-performance extra-high voltage lines "SüdLink" and "SüdOstLink" in Germany, which are completely constructed as underground cables.
To solve the challenge of maintaining and locating faults on direct current lines up to 700 kilometres long, HIGHVOLT has developed a unique system called HiMON® in partnership with the German Technical University (TU) of Dresden. HiMON® uses special sensors to monitor the transmission quality of power cables during operation and can locate faults more precisely and quickly than traditional methods. With the future use of AI, HiMON® should be able to predict cable faults, enabling predictive maintenance and preventing outages.
In order to be able to collect and analyse the accumulated data in real time, the HiMON® monitoring solution required an appropriate software architecture. It was developed by SoftwareOne based on various Microsoft Azure services, such as Azure IoT and Azure Kubernetes Service.
The HiMON® system will deliver significant benefits to transmission system operators who monitor critical infrastructure. By minimising disruptions and maintenance work, HiMON® can increase the availability of power lines and drastically reduce downtime costs.