Purchase of Low Voltage Pre-Fault Monitors and Related Services

Northern Powergrid intends to purchase 6000 low voltage (LV) pre-fault monitors and up to three years’ service from EA Technology Limited.

The primary use of the LV pre-fault monitor is for the low-cost detection of pre-faults on the LV network before a loss of supply event occurs.

The monitor is required to provide the below functionality:

• An indication to where proactive interventions to improve LV network performance would provide most benefit.
• Fault location information to support a proactive ‘find and fix before fail’ approach.
• A means of determining the relative condition / health of underground LV network assets
• Indicate likelihood of future LV circuit fault and predicted approximate time to failure in the range of a few months to greater than 2 years.
• Suitable for internal or external mounting at a Distribution Substation and able to monitor up to 8 LV circuits simultaneously.
• Utilise a preinstalled 4G SIM card to communicate data back to the cloud and provide time sequenced data, plus events as they happen.
• Support the option of receiving data directly from the unit or directly to a 3rd party data storage and analytics provider.

An online portal is required as part of the service and will provide remote access to the captured and calculated measurements. It will also provide instant visibility of network issues in a geographical model, allowing a user to drill into more detail as needed.

The first delivery of monitors is required by May 2022 and the remaining deliveries will be phased until completion no later than January 2023.

Northern Powergrid is operating within strict budget and timescale constraints for the delivery of the requirement. Our market analysis has identified no other suitable product and service combination currently available on the market which is within a reasonable margin of available budget, nor any which could be delivered within the required timescales.