Not-for-profit power cooperative Great River Energy, which serves 1.7 million people across Minnesota and Wisconsin, has partnered with Prisma Photonics to roll out real-time monitoring technology across 90 miles of transmission lines in northern Minnesota. Prisma Photonics will provide its PrismaPower system to track threats like wildfires, ice, wind, and physical damage to the Minnesota grid.

The multi-year project will install PrismaCircuit and PrismaClimate across five key transmission lines connected to four substations using existing fiber optic lines. The goal is to strengthen the grid ahead of Minnesota’s next winter season. These lines, spread across central and northern Minnesota, will now be under constant surveillance without the need for traditional sensors.

“We’re leveraging innovative new technologies that maximize our existing infrastructure investments,” said Priti Patel, vice president and chief transmission officer at Great River Energy. “This solution allows us to utilize our current fiber optic network in a new way to increase resilience in areas of northern and central Minnesota.”

Instead of installing physical sensors on power lines, Prisma Photonics’ technology taps into fiber optic cables already in place, transforming them into an advanced sensing system. Here’s how the company’s works:

Prisma Photonics Fiber Sensing works by connecting an optical interrogator unit into a standard single-mode optical fiber. It is one fiber, part of a cable laid alongside the monitored asset, probably for communications purposes. The Interrogator transmits optical pulses that propagate down the fiber. A minute fraction of the light is reflected from each point along the fiber. The Interrogator measures the reflected light to determine the strain, temperature, pressure, and other quantities over hundreds of kilometers of fiber with sub-meter resolution. The fiber is turned into a continuous acoustic sensor – as if there were tens of thousands of microphones spanning hundreds of kilometers.  

Prisma Photonics says this means faster deployment, no service interruptions, and no need for specialized crews in all weather conditions.

Dr. Eran Inbar, CEO of Prisma Photonics, said, “Our partnership with Great River Energy demonstrates how utilities can extract additional value from their existing infrastructure to enhance grid resilience while avoiding traditional sensor-based solutions’ complexity and maintenance requirements.”

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