HD Electric Co. now offers its new Underground Cable Fault Tester, the UCT-8, a lightweight one-piece tool that is used to test underground de-energized primary shielded voltage cables for faults.
“The most significant advantage is that the tool will digitally analyze the data gathered during a test to declare a cable ‘good’ or ‘bad’ with zero interpretation required on the part of the end-user,” said Eli Johnson, electrical engineer at HD Electric Co. “To give this some context, previous generations of this particular tool required the user to observe an analog needle gauge and form a judgement based on its movements,” added Johnson. “So a bad cable may show up as a needle ‘jumping around’ during the test, or landing on a value that was slightly higher than expected. The UCT-8 takes all the guesswork out of underground cable fault testing.”
Test results for underground DC leakage are clearly displayed as an analog bar graph along with an indication of a good or faulted cable. A self-contained 8kV high voltage source powers the tester using a 9V lithium battery, making the UCT-8 a compact single hot-stick operation tool for testing cable. There is also an integrated safety circuitry that detects cables which have not been properly de-energized, alerts the user of the problem, and shuts down the test to prevent system damage. An automatic shutoff feature helps the battery to last longer.
