VXIbus based optical transducer evaluation system

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) undertook an investigation into using new fiber optic based potential transducers and current transducers (PT and CT) in their power system. This paper describes the data acquisition system (DAS) and associated hardware developed to gather information on the optical devices performance in the field. The DAS is a VXIbus based test system. VXIbus (VME extensions for instrumentation bus) is an industry standard computer bus architecture primarily targeting the needs of data acquisition, test and measurement. By using devices designed for VXIbus one gets excellent accuracy of analog readings, high data throughput, and a versatile test and measurement environment. BPA have found that the ability to share data across the company´s WAN to any location is an advantage of this DAS