Thermal Analysis of the Medium Voltage Cable

The use of high voltage power cables in distribution and transmission networks is still increasing. As a result, the research on the electrical performance of cable lines is still up to date. In the paper, an analytical method of determining the power losses and the temperature distribution in the medium voltage cable was proposed. The main feature of the method is direct including the skin and proximity effects. Then the Joule law is used to express the power losses in the conductor and screen, and the Fourier-Kirchhoff equation is applied to find out the temperature distribution in the cable. The research was focused on a cable with isolated screen and return current in the screen taken into account. The proposed method was tested by using the commercial COMSOL software(5.6/COMSOL AB, Stockholm, Sweden) as well as by carrying out laboratory measurements. Furthermore, the results obtained via the proposed method were compared with those given in literature. The differences between the temperature values calculated by the analytical method, numerical computations and obtained experimentally do not exceed 10%. The proposed analytical method is suitable in prediction the temperature of the power cables with good accuracy.