Hoosier Energy necessity leads to invention of line sensor test kits

Necessity is the mother of invention, but the birth of those inventions often still take time.

 

That was the case over the past decade, as Hoosier Energy developed a method to test the Horstmann Faulted-Circuit Indicators it was implementing on transmission lines.

 

It started with Lance Simpson, made a detour through a summer intern and wound up in the hands of Jason Burge.
The origins date back to 2015. A previous pilot was shelved, and the Horstmann sensors were next up.

 

As a communications engineer at the time, Simpson was tasked with testing the new product.

 

“I originally rigged up some things on the test bench to make sure these products worked as advertised,” he said. “We found out they did and wanted to move forward with installing these as part of our standard package.”

 

In order to test the sensors without faulting the transmission line, Simpson’s device was put to use.

 

“It was a very sad-looking piece of equipment,” Simpson said. “It was never really meant to leave my desk, but it kind of did out of necessity, then it just seemed to be passed around for several years.”

 

Post-COVID, engineering services restarted the dormant internship program. As the manager of power systems design, Simpson had three to five hands-on projects for intern Alex Malone, one of which was to create a more permanent, full-featured test set for the line sensors during the summer of 2023.

 

“He really got to go through the process of drawing something up and then trying to find the components that would fit his design,” Simpson said. “There were a lot of iterations sometimes the part for what was designed weren’t readily available.

 

“By the end of summer, he built what I’d call a beta version of the test set.”

 

It was that beta version and schematic that found its way a year later into the hands of Burge, a communications tech A who has worked at Hoosier Energy for eight years.

 

“It was a function of need,” Simpson said. “We just happened not to have a lot of these projects involving line sensors for a time, then they started to ramp up again.”

 

Burge took the opportunity as a challenge, starting with a simple, single-phase tester and soon followed by a two-phase and three-phase test kit.

 

“I somehow became the Horstmann line sensor guy,” he said. “The test set was a problem that needed a permanent solution, and I had time to work on it.”

 

With experience in homemade projects like battery carriers and portable radio setups as an amateur radio operator, Burge became the fabrication person.

 

He took the raw test kit and put it in a more user-friendly format.

 

“The control surface was on a piece of wood like a cutting board, and the wiring to the switches was all the same color,” Burge said. “It was difficult to troubleshoot, and you could tell it was put together in a limited amount of time.”

 

Burge was able to work with Stansifer Radio Company in Bloomington to get the parts needed, Hoosier Energy engineering technologist Jeff Sturgill to draft a design, and Accuracy Laser and Fabrication of Bedford to get the right fit.

 

The design featured a variable AC transformer known as a variac that allowed for adjusting the voltage. That voltage could then be amplified through loops on the first version by a 10 to 1 ratio, meaning a minimum voltage could replicate what the sensors would experience on the line. A later version works on a 30 to 1 ratio, as Burge explains.

 

“When you step the voltage down, you step the current up,” he said. “Then this bank of switches allows you to switch in different resistors for the test current. If you pass the current through a loop, whatever current you have is multiplied by the number of loops. On this particular one, we’ve got 30 turns, so that means if you’re sending two amps, they become 60 amps – multiply by 30.”

 

The models evolved over the course of the past winter. The first model required parts that were hard to get, so the second version streamlined the procurement process to make parts more easily replaceable.

 

Then came the idea, courtesy of area coordinator of communication Bryan Abel, for the three-phase version in order to speed up the testing process by doing three passes at once.

 

The kits are contained in portable cases, which meant Burge had to fit a lot of stuff into not a lot of space.

 

“It was a mild nightmare trying to fit all that stuff in there,” he said.

 

The cases mean they can travel if and when needed, although Burge can test the sensors at the Power Delivery Operations Center before they go out for installation. The initial commissioning is the primary task.

 

“We’re going to use these every time we build an installation with the Horstmann line sensors,” Burge said. “There’s a set of 12 that will go in at Tell City with that substation project, then the radio switches will be overhauled and that will be another nine sensors.”

 

Being able to test the sensors ahead of time not only allows Hoosier Energy to check the accuracy of the sensors but also map that the right sensors have been placed on the right line.

 

“This saves us a lot of time, but really what it does is save the linemen time,” Burge said. “It’s hard to imagine how frustrating it would be for a lineman to have already packed up the bucket truck, took off their gloves, and then find out B phase and C phase are swapped – you need to go back up there and move those sensors.”

 

That also improves safety because each time the bucket goes up and down, there’s added risk, so the fewer the better.

 

“Jason was really able to take it to the next level,” Simpson said of the test kits. “Even his first iteration was exceptional, and then he went back and did some further refinements.”

 

Those refinements were born of necessity, which is certainly the mother of an invention which is helping Hoosier Energy be safer and more efficient.