Improving Operator Awareness & Safety: The LED Live Line Indicator
AusProof is committed and driven to ensuring that we are providing the industry with the highest possible quality equipment that is not only reliable and durable, but most importantly safe.
This drive extends to developing products and accessories that can also assist a site with OH&S practices, particularly around high voltages. As such, our on-site Research and Development team conduct constant reviews of existing products and exploring possible redevelopment options to improve them. The LED Live Line Indicator is a perfect example of this.
The original Live Line Indicator was released in 1998 using neon bulb technology, something that was quite revolutionary at the time. Its purpose was to enable easy identification of a coupler in underground operational environments that was connected to a live high voltage line, its battery-free design preventing the possibility of false positives. In 2018, after nearly two decades of reliable service to the industry, a redesign of the existing Live Line Indicator, in order to make it brighter than ever, was proposed with two goals in mind:
- increased operator awareness and safety below ground; and
- enable the indicator’s use in open-air operational sites, offering those sites and their staff the same level of safety and risk-awareness.
AusProof’s R&D team spent the next two years on extensive research and experimentation with modern technology, attempting to solve the issue of a neon bulb just not being bright enough to see easily in the daylight of open-air environments.
In 2020, the LED Live Line Indicator was released. By using modern LED technology to make the indicator brighter than ever before, we were able to achieve both our goals of increasing operator awareness and safety below ground, as well as enabling the indicator’s use above ground in open-air and metalliferous sites. The new and improved LED Live Line indicator also has a 50,000-hour lifespan, and has been designed to use as few electrical components as possible.
A key feature that the LED Live Line Indicator has retained from its predecessor is that it is battery-free. This is a feature that AusProof refused to compromise on, as the use of a battery to power the indicator can create a false positive. By way of a copper conductor, the indicator draws its power from the electrical current running through the coupler, without interfering with its operations. When the flow of electricity through the coupler ceases, the indicator will turn off.
Available for both AusProof’s aluminium and stainless steel high voltage couplers, if you would like to know more, get in touch with your local state sales representative.
