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wiredInUSA - October 2016
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New York Power Authority (NYPA) will
use Vesper Marine’s WatchMate asset
protection system to protect a critical
7.5-mile stretch of four submerged cables
in the Long Island Sound.
The cables are buried 10 feet deep under
the Sound, and twice have been seriously
damaged by tugboat anchors. The repair
process can take five to eight months and
“tens of millions of dollars” to fix, according
to Robert J Schwabe, director, asset and
maintenancemanagement, NYPA. Cable
strikes also bring a significant safety and
environmental hazard: the repair process
demands divers in the water to jet out
the cable, find the break and bring it to
surface, and the DCL 45 low viscosity fluid
used for insulation within the cable poses
an environmental risk.
The most recent anchor strike, in 2014,
occurred in winter, meaning the divers
were working in arduous conditions, taking
two months to jet out enough cable to
find the fault, while releasing thousands of
gallons of DCL 45 fluid.
The solution uses two land-based
communication towers to establish a set
of virtual beacons to mark the cable field,
clearly visible on a commercial vessel’s
electronic charts. The Vesper Maritime
system monitors vessels constantly, and a
set of web-based software rules, created
by NYPA and Vesper, determine if a
vessel is likely to anchor in the potential
strike zone. A safety message is delivered
automatically and directly to the bridge
of the vessel and copied to NYPA.
“There were other systems that offered
notification, but they first notified the Coast
Guard and then the vessel, which could
take up to half an hour,” said Schwabe.
“You don’t have that much time.”
An end to strikes