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Reliable Power Cable Screen Connections

Several severe and costly service failures have occurred in the last years in the Norwegian distribution network due to local overheating in power cables.

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Reliable Power Cable Screen
The left picture shows overheated cable screen wires causing serious deformation and damage to the outer semiconductor and the XLPE insulation. The right picture shows damage to a cable outer sheath indicating very high temperature spots in the cable screen/aluminium laminate.

The main issue is quality of the metallic ground screen and laminate connections close to accessories and in particular cable joints. Today no national or international standardised qualification test for such connections exist. The root causes for failure are not fully understood. This project will provide the necessary knowledge to elucidate the routes to failure, and use this information to propose an international qualification test for new equipment. In addition, a simple but robust methodology for calculation of resulting screen currents will be developed. This, together with national seminars and courses provided by REN, should lead to less future failures providing a more reliable distribution network in the future.

This project is a partnership between Norwegian utilities, cable manufacturers and equipment vendors, NTNU, SINTEF Energy Research and REN (Project owner).

This project is approved by The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE Norsegian only) through their national mandate to ensure  and promote efficient energy markets and cost-effective energy systems and contribute to efficient energy use.

Information on the project can be found in REN-Nytt no 1 - 2016 (page16 og 17 - in Norwegian only).


This is an IPN-project (Innovation project for the Industrial Sector) funded by The Research Council of Norway.


 

Key Factors

Project duration

2016 - 2019

Explore research areas

Laboratories

Electrotechnical laboratories

Electrotechnical laboratories

SINTEF Energy Research operates laboratories for high voltage, high power and climatic testing. Customers are manufacturers, suppliers and users of electric power equipment.