Physical protection of electrical substations is much more critical than simply guarding against copper theft. Recent terrorist attacks on substations and the potential for simultaneous attacks across the U.S. put the entire country at serious risk for major power interruption. Detection devices such as fence sensors, thermal cameras, microwave and passive infrared (PIR) motion sensors all provide some warning against such attacks, but are all limited in their ability to detect threats outside the fence line, and take months to deploy at each site.
In the last five years a new technology, Compact Surveillance Radar (CSR), has emerged to fill that gap by providing wide area coverage (10 to 100s of acres of volumetric coverage) in a small lightweight sensor (< 5 lbs) that is simple and quick to set up using existing infrastructure.