Eleven manholes on average have some fire-related event, every day. And those are just the fires that are visible from the street. These events cost utilities millions of dollars in damages, repairs and outages. The problem is getting worse due to aging infrastructure. Corrosive materials such as salt from road run-off exacerbate the issue. Salt water interacts with the aging cables in the vault, breaks down cable insulation, leads to faults, encourages surface tracking, which leads to fires, combustible gases, and explosions.
“Fires are shockingly frequent in older secondary networks. We analyzed over a million data points at four different North American network owners over an aggregate of 64 months. There were 3.67 fires per vault per day!”, according to Glen Bertini, Chief Scientist at Plenovo.
Monitoring without active ventilation provides some insights into the current condition and level of combustible gases inside vaults. Monitoring alone is prone to false alarms and does not prevent explosions. Active ventilation exhausts combustible gasses, preventing explosions. By combining monitoring and active ventilation, network owners benefit from systematic data insights, warnings, explosion avoidance, and actionable intelligence identifying where fires are prevalent.
To comprehensively solve this issue Plenovo® is launching PreVent™ 2.0 at DistribuTECH 2019. PreVent 2.0 is a complete solution with 14 patent pending technologies that deliver the only solution to predict and prevent manhole explosions. The PreVent solution includes three components: smart cover, ventilator and monitor.
Prevent explosions with the PreVent ventilator & smart cover
- Active ventilation to exhaust combustible gases from vault
- Variable fan speeds up to 800 CFM
- Reduce vault temperature, increasing equipment life & reliability
- Smart cover – limits vault exposure to water, salt & debris
Predict with the Edge monitor & dashboard
- Predict possibility of explosions in manholes
- Measure critical gases, cable temperature & water levels
- Microsoft Azure IoT cloud for industrial grade security & reliability
- Real-time actionable alerts to prioritize M & O activities
- No guesswork dashboard
- Improved wireless communications designed for urban environments
The PreVent suite of products deliver safer streets, infrastructure security and management insights delivering lower operating costs.
You can learn more by visiting Plenovo at Booth #12321 at DistribuTECH 2019 or visiting us online at www.plenovo.com