The IEEE Power and Engineering Society (PES), Insulated Conductor Committee (ICC) met on October 21–23, 2024, in Bonita Springs, Florida. This committee creates standards for low-, medium-, and high-voltage power distribution cables.
Our NETA standards heavily reference the IEEE standards to provide guidance on voltage test levels, durations, and acceptable criteria. It is important to not only be up to date on the latest changes and know when the changes are coming but to also guide the IEEE documents to incorporate more of a field perspective on how and when to perform the testing.
IEEE 400
The primary interests for NETA at this meeting were the IEEE 400 guides published last year. The omnibus (400) should make a PAR in the next meeting, and the committee will begin work to update it.
- 400.1 (DC testing PILC) was not discussed during this meeting.
- 400.2 (VLF) was just released, and not much has changed.
- 400.2 (VLF) will begin the process of a rewrite immediately, as the rewrite that just passed was essentially reaffirmed to ensure it didn’t expire.
- There were several presentations and some discussion of the contents of 400.3 (off-line PD).
- The 400.4 (DAC) guide is going through active revision and needs to ballot by next year. The committee is actively reviewing this document, and there is a lot of test equipment manufacturer influence.
Other Topics
- There were considerable discussions regarding distributed temperature sensing (DTS), distributed acoustical sensing (DAS), and distributed strain sensing (DSS) which monitor temperature, acoustics, and strain on power cables in real-time. Real-time monitoring seemed to be a big topic, and it is one trend that might impact maintenance testing in the future, which could be a driver of new business or take away from the cable testing business, depending on how it shakes out. There were lively debates from various test equipment manufacturers on aspects of the guides. Consensus was typically hard to reach.
- Interest was gauged for a new standard on the diagnostic testing of terminations and joints, and it looks like people want it.
- An excellent new CIGRE document on cable testing, TB-924, was recenty published.
The IEEE PES ICC Committee’s next meeting is May 19–21, 2025.
Chasen Tedder is an Electrical Field Engineer at Hampton Tedder Technical Services. He is 1st Vice President on NETA’s Board of Directors and serves on the Membership Application Review Committee, Conference Committee, and Standards Review Council.