Prysmian Group has secured a $4.5 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), as part of the Grid Overhaul with Proactive, High-speed Undergrounding for Reliability, Resilience, and Security (GOPHURRS) program to strengthen and modernize America's aging power grid through the development of cost-effective, high-speed, and safe undergrounding technologies.
Prysmian aims to develop a hands-free power cable splicing machine to operate in underground vaults and reduce the share of splicing-caused medium-voltage network failures to less than 5% from 60-80% with the help of the funding. The process will improve workforce safety by reducing the time spent by the underground cable splicing crews in underground vaults.
The machine is proposed to splice cable automatically using advanced technologies, which help humans to operate the machine remotely from a safer environment. Performing cable splicing using this machine will increase the reliability of the network and reduce energy losses due to splice failures, if successful.
Prysmian is developing the power cable splicing machine with Con Edison and Exelon. The company aims to improve its Scope 4, avoided carbon, emissions.
