Cable lines / 05.06.2025

Cable duct fire

The materials of the outer sheath of cables usually differ depending on whether the cable is laid in the ground or above the ground (in places where oxygen is available). To avoid cable fires (for example, due to a short circuit), cables for open laying are provided with a non-flammable outer sheath. However, when laying

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Cable lines / 29.05.2025

Cable outer sheath strength

To design the cable line, we need to pass the following stages:✅ Evaluate the electrical strength of the cable outer sheath (jacket) and agree on what is the permissible voltage on the screen.✅ Select the grounding/bonding scheme of the screens (number of sections, cycles, etc.)✅ Perform the thermal calculation of the cable line and select

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Cable lines / 26.05.2025

Mistakes with cable lines

The reliability of cable lines depends on a number of factors:1️⃣ Design (including calculations);2️⃣ Production and delivery;3️⃣ Cable laying and termination/joint installation;4️⃣ Cable operation (testing, monitoring, diagnostic etc);5️⃣ Unpredictable actions of third parties. Mistakes at any of these stages can lead to serious financial losses: damage to the cable, the need to repair the damaged

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Cable lines / 21.05.2025

Equipotential conductor along the cable line

In 110-500 kV networks with a grounded neutral, cable line lengths from 0.6 to 1.2 km are considered as “bad”. The reasons are simple – for lines more than 0.3-0.6 km, single-end screen grounding can no longer be used (due to the dangerous voltage Us induced on the screens during a single-phase short circuit external

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Cable lines / 19.05.2025

Bad cable line length

We have to design the cable length that the customer wants. However, let’s discuss which line length would be particularly inconvenient for us and why. The answer to this question depends on the voltage class and the method of neutral grounding. Today, let’s only discuss 110-500 kV networks with a grounded neutral. For such networks,

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Overvoltages and protection / 13.05.2025

Surge arresters and IEC 60099

All the experience allows the author to state that the global metal-oxide surge arrester (MOA) industry is in dire need of simple MOA application methods, but, instead it, is developing endless editions of IEC 60099, adding details to an already complex document that contains dozens of MOA characteristics. At the same time, IEC 60099 does not divide

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Cable lines / 12.05.2025

Reserve cable phase

There are projects where reserve cables or reserve pipes/ducts are provided (empty or with a cable in them). Of course, this complicates the project and makes it more expensive, but maybe it’s worth it? It looks like we are talking about “insuring” a cable line in case of trouble, but the problem is that even

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Cable lines / 09.05.2025

Cable current selection

Our industry has excellent international standards (IEC) and excellent software. Both provide us with high accuracy calculations. However, despite the precise methods, can we be sure of the results of the calculations? Of course not! At least because we don’t always understand which source data to use in calculations. If we do not have accurate

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Overvoltages and protection / 02.05.2025

Cable overvoltage protection

In the energy industry, many processes can not only be calculated on models, but also measured in an operating network. Measurements are important because they allow us to verify the models and, if necessary, adjust them. One of the areas where measurements in the network are practically impossible is impulse processes (lightning and switching). Therefore,

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Various energy topics / 01.05.2025

Green transition or mobile connection?

Europe is talking about the “Green transition”. This Monday (April 28th), it became clear that there might not be a “Green transition”, but only a “1/2 Green transition”. As soon as the share of renewable sources reaches 50% of generation, the network begins to have serious problems with frequency and voltage regulation. I believe that

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