Towards non-steady state rating of offshore wind farm cables

Abstract

Wind power plays a significant role in energy production. The future developments of wind power installations are more likely to take place offshore due to space availability, fewer problems with local population acceptance, and more reliable winds. For offshore wind farms, fluctuations in generation can be large as conditions are changeable. There are no specific load patterns to enable the wind farm export cable rating to be calculated based on actual cyclic loads. The existing rule for calculating the rating is based on maximum steady state wind power output which can lead to cable oversizing.

This project focusses on developing non-steady state rating techniques for High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) wind farm export cables that apply cyclic rating methods to analyse the effect of different flat-top cyclic load cycles on the thermal performance of a three-core HVAC 132kV XLPE cable. Three FEA cable models are used for testing buried at sea, landfall and J-tube in air cable sections. Sensitivity analysis simplifies the models to minimise computation time required. Five cyclic load profiles are run for each cable section (3 daily and 2 extended cycles above 24 hour).

Results are compared to one year of normalised wind power data from the Cullerin Range wind farm to establish exceedance of the cable temperature limit for each cyclic load. The cycle with the closest fit within limitations is then used to estimate the potential for increasing cable rating.

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Identifiers

ORCID for James Pilgrim: orcid.org/0000-0002-2444-2116

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