Contactless, Real Time, and Vectorial Inspection of a Multiwire Power Cable Voltage Using an Electro-Optic Technique

Here, we demonstrate the suitability of the electro-optic technique for contactless monitoring of a power cable composed of several conductors. We have developed an electrometer performing real-time characterization of the field surrounding the cable. The electrometer gives the transient evolution of the field strength as well as the field orientation. The actual transverse field vector associated with a three-phase cable follows ellipses. These ellipses have been assessed with an analytical approach, finite difference time domain simulations, and also experimentally with the electro-optic electrometer.