COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF HV CABLES

ELECTRICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Dimitar GEORGIEV *

*Technical University of Varna, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, 9010 Varna, Bulgaria,

e-mail: d.georgiev@tu-varna.bg

Abstract —The simulations of electromagnetic transients in

power systems require accurate representation of the elements TABLE I. HV CABLE DIMENSIONS
through their models. The increasing share of HV and EHV
Cable type
cables gives rise to a number of questions concerning their - -
appropriate modelling for the particular tasks. This involves A2XS(FL)2Y RM/110 64/110 (123)kV Meas. Nom.
knowledge of the effect of cable design and material properties
on cable electrical characteristics. Conductor diameter mm 49,1 49,0

Conductor screen thickness mm 2,23 1,2

Keywords — Electrical characteristics, Мodeling,
Transmission systems, Transients, Underground cables Insulation thickness mm 16,5 15,0

Insulation screen thickness mm 1,94 1,2

I. INTRODUCTION
Screen thickness mm 1,38 1,38
At the planning stage, the only technical data available is
that contained in manufacturers datasheets or international Outer cover thickness mm 4,85 4,85
standards. The information thus provided is very often
incomplete, the data being nominal, approximate or
guaranteed and could differ within a defined tolerance. The
precision of the results depends to a great extent on the
accuracy of the input parameters. In the manufacturing
process, dimensional accuracy is limited and the thickness of
each layer differs from the nominal one [1]. The international
standards regulate the acceptable deviations of layer
dimensions [2][3]. In order to compensate for the inaccuracy
of the production process and the effect of aging, the
geometric dimensions of the individual layers may differ from
the minimum allowable values, thus accurate data of some of
the layers and the properties of some of the materials cannot Fig. 1. Cross-section of single core cable with Milliken conductor and
copper wire screen.
be obtained even from the manufacturers. Cable modeling
routines for EMT studies require the cables to be presented Table 1 shows that the conductive layers dimension values
with their layers dimensions and the electrical characteristics are very close to the nominal ones, where the insulation and
of the materials as shown in Figure 1 [4]. Section Two the semiconductor ones show a significant difference.
contains guidelines on processing the information available in
datasheets so that it can be used as input parameters in EMTP
[5]. The typical datasheet usually contains the geometrical II. PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
dimensions and the cross section of the core conductor, the
main insulation and the outer insulation layer thickness, the A. Core conductor
cross section of the screen. Semiconductor data for the layers For calculating the cable constants in EMTP, the core
cannot be usually found in the datasheets. If it is available, it conductor is characterized by its radius and resistivity as solid
has approximate values. IEC standards, as well as customer (1).
requirements necessitate conducting electrical, mechanical
 m I 0 (mr1 )
and physical tests, such as measuring core and screen DC z1 =  (1)
resistance, measuring capacitance, measuring tan( ) , 2 r1 I1 (mr1 )
measuring geometrical dimensions and physical and chemical
testing of the materials [6]. What is presented in Section Three where  is the resistivity of the material according to IEC
is a comparative analysis of HV cable electrical characteristics 889 and IEC 28 – 1,7241E-8 Ωm и 2,8264E-8 Ωm for copper
calculated using geometrical data from technical and aluminium respectively, m is the skin effect factor (2), r1
documentation and measurements obtained from a specimen
of a 110 kV single core cable. The impact of the deviation of is the core conductor radius, I 0 and I1 are modified Bessel
each layer dimension on cable electrical characteristics is functions [7].
evaluated. The data used for calculations in this paper are
presented in Table 1 which indicates 110 kV single core cable
geometrical dimensions based on technical documentation
and laboratory measurements on cable specimen.

978-1-7281-1413-2/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

 j
m=
 is assumed that current does not flow in the semicon layer and
Where  is the angular frequency,  is the magnetic
permeability of the material. In order to reduce the skin effect,
the core conductors are stranded and cross sections exceeding
1200 mm (for copper) and 1600 mm (for aluminium) are
manufactured as Milliken, the segments being separated by a
semi-conductive tape and the wires are insulated each other by
enameling or oxidation (Figure 1). Each segment is twisted so
that the wires pass from the external part of the conductor to
the inner part at a certain length. Thus, the current flowing
along the external wires is directed to the centre of the
conductor through the wires. The conventional formula for
calculating the DC resistance of a conductor is as follows:
 its internal radius can be easily determined by the following
r0 =
S
Where S is the effective cross section area of the core
conductor. The use of this formula should be avoided as it
does not take into account wire twisting of the core conductor
and the resistance is underestimated. The gaps between the
individual sectors can be accounted for by correcting the
resistivity of the material as a ratio of the radius to the core
effective cross section (2).
  r12
 =  
S insulation thickness, which can be found in any datasheet.
It should be taken into consideration that due to the great
variety of core design the difference between the radius and
the effective cross section can vary with the different types of
core as well as different made of core.
B. Semicon layers and outer insulation
(2) Because of its high resistance - between 0.01 - 10 Ω/m, it
is considered as part of the insulation when calculating the
impedance. The relative permittivity of the semicon layer is in
the order of 1000 and it takes the potential of the core,
therefore it is considered as part of the core in the calculation
of the capacitance. In most technical documentation, data on
the thicknesses of the semicon layers are not available, and
where available, they are approximate. Consequently, their
approximate thickness can be determined indirectly through
the available geometrical dimensions of the other layers.
C. Screen
In technical documentation, the screen is typically
represented by its cross section. When the latter is solid fig. 2,
(3) transformation:
S sh
r2 = + r32 (5)

r3 = r4 − bout (6)
where S sh is the cross section of the screen, r2 is the
inner radius of screen, r3 is the outer radius of the screen r4
(4) is the outer radius of the outer insulation, bout is the outer

Table 2 illustrates the DC resistance values r0 of the cable

in Table 1, comparing the measured, the nominal reference
and the calculated values in EMPT [8] with and without
corrections as per (4).
Fig. 2. Cross-section of single core cable with solid aluminium screen.

TABLE II. CORE CONDUCTOR RESISTANCE The task is more complicated in the case of a copper wire
screen fig. 1 due to the lack of data on the diameter and the
1 2 3 4 number of wires. EMTP modeling routines allow considering
Calculated the screen solely as a solid tubular conductor, which requires
Calculated
with processing of the input data [9]. The cross section of the
Laboratory with
Nominal EMTP
test EMTP not
corrected fictitious tubular screen is determined (7)
corrected
via (2)
r0 Stube =   (r32 − rb2 ) (7)
0,0183 0,0186 0,0149 0,0176
Ω/km
ρ Following Table 1 - r2 - 45,22 mm, r3 - 46,60 mm. The
2,928Е-8 2,976Е-8 2,826E-8 3,345E-8
Ω/m
fictitious cross section is calculated (7).
The figures in Table 2 show that the values of the The ratio of the fictitious to the effective cross section is
measured and the nominal resistance are very close, whereas calculated (8)
the calculated ones in column 3 are significantly lower. It
Stube
should be noted that the EMTP modeling routines take into k= (8)
account the skin effect through the skin effect factor (2) but Sscreen
they do not take into account its reduction by the sector-
shaped and stranded core design. Therefore, the skin effect the coefficient k is used to correct the resistivity of copper, the
and the a.c. resistance are overestimated, particularly at high value corrected serves as an input parameter for EMTP
frequencies [8]. modeling.

TABLE III. SCREEN RESISTANCE

 Calculated in Calculated in Case 2: Conductor radius nominal, thickness of semicon
Laboratory
test
EMTP corrected EMTP not layers from measurements and insulation thickness nominal.
via (7), (8) corrected
r0sc Case 3: Conductor radius nominal, thickness of semicon
0,1251 0,1543 0,0443
Ω/km layers nominal and insulation thickness from measurements.
Screen
cross Case 4: All dimensions from measurements (see Table 5).
113,31 - 400
section
mm2
TABLE IV. SURGE IMPEDANCE AND PROPAGATION VELOCITY
The calculations performed in Table 3 prove that not Zc ν
taking into account the copper wire screen design leads to Ω m/μs
great deviations and underestimated screen resistance. The
Calc. Dev. Calc. Dev.
resistance calculated by (7) and (8) is greater than the Case 1 19,19 (-0,15%) 179 -
measured one since the model does not take into account the Case 2 19,64 (+2,3%) 170 (-5%)
aluminium foil protection against the water radial penetration Case 3 19.22 - 179 -
associated with the screen and acting as a parallel conductor.
The screen is helically laid above the semicon layer, therefore
its length exceeds that of the cable. This is identified by the The effect of the accuracy of the semicon layes on the
angle of screen laying (9). This information is not available in surge impedance and the propagation velocity is seen in Case
datasheets but can be obtained on demand from the 2.
manufacturer.
TABLE V. CASE 4
III. WAVE PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTICS
Zc ν
In order to evaluate the impact of the dimension precision, Ω m/μs
a comparative analysis of cable wave propagation Meas. Nom. Meas. Nom.
characteristics calculated using technical documentation data 20,94 171
19,22 179
and laboratory test data is conducted. (+8,2%) (-4,5%)

Table 1 illustrates that the conductive layers dimension

values are very close to the nominal ones, where the insulation Table 5 illustrates the difference between the results
and the semiconductor ones show a significant difference. In obtained through the nominal data and through cable
the calculations performed, the cable is assumed lossless. specimen data.

Surge impedance and propagation velocity are found from

TABLE VI. COMPARE OF CAPACITANCE
(9) and (10). Capacitance is found from (11) with semicons
taken into account [10][1][11]. C
μF/km
1 0 r  Calculated Calculated
Z surge = ln  2  Ω (9) Measured Nominal from specimen Requirement
2  0 r  r1  data data
0,278 0,290
0,2742 0,285
(1.37%) (5.45%)
1
= m/μs (10)
L0C Table 6 shows the effect of the geometrical dimensions
precision in calculating the capacitance.
2 0 r
C= μF/km (11) The EMTPs allow representing the cables solely as coaxial
 rb  solid conductors separated by means of insulation. Actually,
ln  
 ra  cables are of a more complicated design, which causes
significant deviations when calculating cable constants [1].
where r1 is core radius, a and b are thicknesses of both Cable datasheets often do not contain all the data required
conductor and sheath screens, ra = r1 + a rb = r2 − b ,
and for EMTP and therefore the latter should use nominal or
approximate data. Most often, data on semiconducting layers
0 is the magnetic permeability respectively  0 and  r are are not available and there the largest deviation from the
nominal parameters occurs. The calculations show that these
the electric permittivity of vacuum and XLPE, L0 is cable have a significant impact on cable wave propagation
inductance [12]. characteristics.
To evaluate the impact of the precision of each layer’s
geometrical dimensions on the electrical characteristics four IV. CONCLUSION
different cases have to be considered: The following conclusions can be drawn from the studies,
Case 1: Conductor radius from measurements, thickness calculations and comparisons:
of semicon and insulation layers nominal. 1. Referring the ever growing construction of high-
voltage cable transmission systems, it is necessary to pay close
attention to the documentation produced by the cable
manufacturer in order to provide precision modeling, both in Gen. Meet. PES 2010, 2010.
the study of steady state and transients as well. [12] N. Amekawa, N. Nagaoka, Y. Baba, and A.
2. The mathematical models of high and extra high Ametani, “Derivation of a semiconducting layer
voltage cables must be refined using the information available impedance and its effect on wave propagation
from the manufacturers. When working with nominal data, characteristics on a cable,” IEE Proc. - Gener.
calculations on specimen data should be repeated upon cable Transm. Distrib., vol. 150, no. 4, p. 434, 2003.
production.
3. It is necessary to create a methodology for
information processing and models compiling in compliance
with the specific task.
4. It is necessary for manufacturers to provide more
detailed information about the geometrical dimensions of the
cables - thicknesses of the semiconductor layers with
permissible deviation, number, diameter and angle of laying
of the wires with a copper wire screen, resistance data and
relative permittivity of the semicons.
5. It is important to carry out a comparative analysis so as
to determine to what extent simplifications of the model are
acceptable depending on the task to be solved and the
accuracy required.

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