The Sound Monitor:
Detect Partial Discharge Early
Detect developing partial-discharge activity early and monitor its trend continuously across critical HV/MV assets.
The Sound Monitor combines non-contact ultrasonic sensors, Sensor Link and web-based analytics to turn condition evidence into actionable alerts, health reports and more confident maintenance decisions—before hidden insulation degradation disrupts operations.
Leading operations teams use acoustic solutions from Seven Bel.
Contact-free Installation
for MV Switchgear
The Sound Monitor brings continuous acoustic monitoring directly to critical cable terminations.
A compact sensor, PoE-connected control unit and analytics turn ultrasonic data into a continuous view of partial-discharge activity—stored in the cloud or on premise.
From Continuous Monitoring
to Informed Action
The Sound Monitor system brings ultrasound data capture, observation and alerting together in a clear, repeatable workflow.
Install & Record Data
Position and connect the PoE sensor units near cable terminations, switchgear, transformers, busbar bushings or comparable HV/MV components. Configure recording intervals and select typical frequency bands to capture partial-discharge events.
Analyse & Observe
Use the web dashboard and automatically generated reports to review recordings for partial-discharge activity trends incl. distributions that may indicate corona or surface discharge. Compare current behaviour with historical or testlab data from damaged reference components.
Act on Alerts
Configurable thresholds identify changing conditions. Email or SMS notifications help maintenance teams prioritise investigation, plan the appropriate response and document findings.
Powerful, Yet Easy to Use
Monitor location health across your fleet, investigate relevant acoustic evidence in detail, and identify assets that require attention. Clear reports turn each finding into a more confident maintenance decision.
Fleet-Wide Location Health
The Fleet-Wide Location Health view brings all monitored assets into one structured overview. Select the relevant time period, site, and location group to review measurement coverage and the current health status of every monitored location across your facility or fleet.
Clear health indicators make it easy to prioritise attention. Locations with changing acoustic behaviour, missing data, or threshold exceedances can be identified immediately, so maintenance teams can focus their investigation on the assets that require action most urgently.
Partial Discharge Cluster Analysis
The Partial Discharge Cluster Analysis evaluates the phase-resolved PD pattern of every measurement and combines PD activity level, cluster structure, and trend behaviour in one clear view across one or multiple locations. Each recording can be assessed for phase-related event accumulations and the confidence of the detected result.
This makes persistent or changing partial-discharge behaviour visible across many recordings. Z-score trends show how far recent activity deviates from the historical baseline, while configurable thresholds can highlight conditions that require attention before they develop into a critical failure.
Detailed Signal Investigation
The Detailed Signal Investigation view lets users drill down from a trend point to the original recording. Analyse sound pressure levels in configurable frequency bands, select the relevant time interval, and review how acoustic activity develops within each measurement.
Detailed views provide the acoustic evidence behind an indication, including spectrograms, averaged frequency spectra, filtered audio playback, and phase-resolved PD diagrams. This enables maintenance and technical teams to investigate the underlying signal in context and make well-founded assessment decisions.
FAQs
Which HV/MV components can the Sound Monitor system monitor?
Cable terminations, switchgear, transformers, busbar bushings and comparable critical components.
Where is monitoring data stored?
Monitoring data can be stored in a public cloud environment or within your own on-premise infrastructure. In an on-premise setup, data remains within your organisation’s network; a cloud deployment enables authorised access without maintaining local storage infrastructure. The Sensor Link can operate on a local network with or without internet access, depending on the selected deployment model.
Where does the dashboard software run?
The dashboard can be installed locally on a designated computer, hosted on an on-premise server and accessed through your intranet, or deployed in a public cloud environment. This flexibility allows the monitoring workflow to fit your IT, security and access requirements.
What is included in the Sensor Link?
The Sensor Link supplies up to 12 connected sensors with power, preprocesses their acoustic data and transfers it to the selected storage environment. It combines the following components inside an IP66 rated cabinet:
- Control unit
- Power-over-Ethernet switch with up to 16ports
- 24V and 48VPower supply
Can the Sensor Link and sensors be installed outdoors?
Yes, within their specified environmental conditions. The IP66-rated Sensor Link operates from −25 °C to +55 °C at 20–95% non-condensing humidity; The sensor unit operates from −25 °C to +60 °C under the same humidity conditions. External sensor installations should be configured for the expected exposure conditions.
Do I need specialist partial-discharge expertise to interpret the data?
No specialist expertise is required to get started. Seven Bel provides training on the system and the basics of interpretation, while automated reports begin with a clear health summary and plain-language warning reasons before progressively showing the signal data evidence behind each finding.
Can recording intervals and frequency bands be configured?
Yes. Recording duration, intervals and relevant audible or ultrasonic frequency bands can be tailored to the application.
Can the system scale across multiple sites and locations?
Yes. The monitoring architecture is designed to scale from individual critical locations to large, multi-site fleets comprising hundreds of sensors.