MOVE over Sherlock! There's a new detective in town. More than £150,000 has been invested in detection equipment to sniff out faults on underground electricity cables on the streets of Newport.

Western Power Distribution, the firm responsible for maintaining the electricity network for the region, uses the latest digital equipment to detect odours that escape when a cable is damaged or broken.

It means faults can be pinpointed more accurately and repaired more speedily, with less disruption to roads and pavements.

Area distribution manager Gareth Thomas is looking forward to the device being put to work on the city's streets after a series of trials.

"We're used to homing in on a fault to within, say, a 10 to 20 metre area, but then you have to try different techniques to determine the actual spot. "But with this new equipment, once you are in that specific 20- metre zone you simply make a series of small holes with an insulated steel search bar, which looks like a harpoon, insert a sensor tube into each hole and take a reading.

"Due to high levels of energy, an odour rather like a burning chemical smell is released when a cable break or fault occurs.

"The sniffer detects this and the fault is usually located where the reader is at its highest."