DESIGN AND BUILD A TRANSMISSION LINE FOR A

REAL LIFE POWER SYSTEM MODEL

Abstract The 132 kV transmission system consists of 4 three-

The design and construction of a three phase, 132 kV, phase ac transmission lines provided with protection
ac transmission line for a real life power model devices (Figure1) and connected with actual vacuum
capable of studying various types of relays used in circuit breakers. The operating voltage of the model has
protection, is presented using  -models. The system been decided as 110V, for safety reasons, and a single

design voltage of the model is 110 V and rated at 16 line is rated at 4 kVA.

kVA. Custom made inductors, capable of handling Table 1 gives a comparison of the base values of the

short circuit currents, with off the shelf capacitors are actual line and the model.

used to model and construct the transmission line. The

Base Real line Model
transmission system will be part of a real life power VA 100MVA 16kVA
system model to serve as a teaching aid. Voltage 132kV 110V
Current 437.4A 83.96A
Impedance 174.24Ω 0.756Ω
1. Introduction
Table 1: Comparison of base values of line and model
The use of power system models to give an insight into
The parameter design is done using the -model
the power system through experiments is an integral
architecture which implements the distributed
part of an undergraduate curriculum [1,2].
inductance, capacitance and resistance of the line, as
Commercially available power system units are
lumped parameters of a  section [3]. In order to be able
prohibitively expensive, especially when the high
to implement various protection schemes two of the
currents required for fault studies have to be handled.
lines are made by cascading several  sections together.
Thus, it was decided to build such a model by designing
and assembling the required components. This teaching
2. Calculation of transmission line parameters
aid is being developed through a series of undergraduate
Each of the transmission lines shown in figure 1 are
projects, with financial support from the power supply
Lynx conductors of length 20 km. These lines have an
industry of Sri Lanka.
inductance per unit length of 1.27 mH/km. Thus,
X = 25.4 mH
Considering the ratio of base impedances in Table 1

=110.2 mH
Select L=110 μH
Check total voltage drop for 4 lines for rated current

=0.01 pu

Figure 1: Single line diagram of the model 62

Total voltage drop
which is acceptable.
The typical surge impedance of a 132 kV line is taken as
380Ω. Using the ratio of base impedances for 110 V, Line 3, 4 will be constructed using a single pi section as
shown in figure 3 and these lines will be monitored only
at the two ends.

Substituting l =110 µF

Figure 3: Line 3 and 4 Pi-section

The Q factor for lines 3 & 4 can be calculated.

C = 40.89 μF
Choose capacitor value= 40 μF
Leakage reactance of the line can be calculated as.
3. Inductor Design
It was originally proposed to construct the line (110 µH)
Ω
using off the shelf 10 µH inductors. The 10 µH
For a typical 132 kV line, x/r  3
inductors available in the market have a high resistance
L=110 mH, X=0.03456 Ω
in the range of 5 mΩ (where only 1mΩ is required) and
R  0.0115 Ω
can handle a maximum of 20 A. Since the proposed
Line 1 & 2 will consist of 6 cascading -sections as
lines are to form a part of a power system where various
indicated by figure 2 and table 2. These are selected to
types of faults will be created and protective schemes to
so that monitoring can be done at 10%, 15%, 50%, 85%,
operate, they should be able to handle fault currents
and 90% in addition to start end.
until tripped by the circuit breaker. Hence, the inductor
had to be separately designed for this application. The
aim was to obtain the required line resistance from the
line conductor itself while also permitting the high fault
currents to flow until automatically interrupted.
Figure 2: Line 1 and 2 Pi-sections

At rated current considering the rated voltage induced,

Line Line
Section Inductance Capacitance Resistance
length length
No. (µH) ( µF) (mΩ)
(%) (km)

1 9 1.8 10 =2 =1.46
Also for an inductor
2 7 1.4 8 1.5 =1.28
3 34 6.8 37 =6 =2.75
4 34 6.8 37 =6 =2.75 Where B=Maximum flux density, f=Frequency,
5 7 1.4 8 =1.5 =1.28
N=Number of turns and A=Core area.
6 9 1.8 10 =2 =1.46
Taking the maximum flux density as 1.8 T, for a 50 Hz
Table 2: Line 1 and 2 Parameter Values
system substitute from (12),

For an inductor , equate the Number of turns(N),

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Permeability of material(μ), core area(A),length of the
flux path( ) can be equated as given in equation (13).
Therefore volume can be equated as
From the graph of the magnetization curve of silicon
steel [4] the average is around 200.
Substitution from (2),
To reduce the amount of material used for the core, an
air gap is introduced in order to increase the reluctance
with a shorter path.
Since 50 mm wide, 0.27 mm thick silicon sheet steel
was readily available from LTL Transformers it was
decided to use 100 sheets of these laminations stacked
together to give a cross section of 1350 . The final
dimensions of the core (for a 10 µH inductor) are as
. 4. Conclusion
A trial inductor was wound using 20 turns of 4
copper conductor on a straight core of 70 . This
gave an inductance of 62.5 µF and a resistance of 63.17
mΩ. Calculation shows that the x/r ratio=0.55 is not
sufficient. Thus through calculation it was decided to go
for a 6.8 mm 2.7 mm rectangular copper conductor.
By winding the core with the conductor the required
number of turns was obtained by suitable extrapolation.
After the initial number of turns for the 110 µH was
obtained from equation (13) it can be seen that when the
flux density is kept constant. Hence
Thus the number of turns for the remaining inductors
are calculated as in table 3.
Core Inductance No of Core Dimensions(mm)
No. (µH) turns Width Length Height
1 110 26.5 50 240
2 37 15 50 130
3 10 8 50 70 27
4 8 7 50 70 27
Table 3: Inductor dimensions
The initial core length of 70 mm was used for the 8 µH
and 10 µH inductors and the core lengths for the
remaining sizes were calculated in order to have enough
space for the required number of turns.
Test for overheating under fault conditions was
performed on a 110 µH inductor where up to 140 A
current was passed through for 5 seconds and the
voltage was measured. The maximum temperature
reached under these conditions was acceptable to the
human touch.
The constructed inductor values are measured and the
results have proven that the approach used was accurate.
These together with the calculated capacitance will
make up the pi sections which will model a typical 132
kV transmission line. This system when completed will
be used to conduct experiments to observe the behavior
of the lines and the system under normal and abnormal
conditions.
Purely theoretical approach to transmission line and
inductor design is not practically feasible. A
combination of theory with experimentation method
yields better results.
Designing inductor cores with pure magnetic silicon
steel is not economically feasible; hence to reduce the
cost and obtain linearity an air gap is introduced to
increase the total reactance. The resistance of the
inductor had to be made from the copper conductor
itself in order to maintain the typical x/r ratio for a 132
kV transmission line.
5. References
[1] Swain N.K., Anderson J.A., Korrapati RB, "Study of
Electrical Power Systems Using LabVIEW Virtual Instruments
Modules", Proceedings of The 2008 IAJC-IJME International
Conference
27
27
64
 [2] Agustin A. IrizarryRivera, “Teaching Electric Power
System Analysis Using Virtually Attractive Tools” (1999),
ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
[3] Singh. S.N.“Electric Power Generation, Transmission and
Distribution”, Prentice-Hall of India, 2003
[4] Alex Goldman, “Handbook of modern ferromagnetic
29th materials By Alex Goldman”, Kluwer Academic Publications,
1999
[5] CEB Specification 010 : 2009 Aluminum Conductors
Steel Reinforced (ACSR Conductors)

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