Renewable Energy
Dealing with the energy bottleneck with minimal disruption
Mark Gledhill and Allan Russell outline the benefits of aluminium conductor technology which is less prone to corrosion and is an effective power conductor.
Mark Gledhill y Allan Russell destacan las ventajas de la tecnología de conductores de aluminio, con menor tendencia a la corrosión y eficaces conductores de corriente.
Mark Gledhill und Allan Russell zeigen die Vorteile der Aluminiumleiter- technologie auf, die für geringere Korrosionsanfälligkeit und effektive Stromleitung bekannt ist.
T
he UK is just one of many countries investing in wind power as a future source of energy – and building offshore wind farms has to be an essential part of that mission.
However, we believe that there needs to be as much focus on looking at how ‘fit for purpose’ the rest of the network is, in order to ensure that energy can be easily transported to the point of need.
Te reality is that many of these offshore wind farms are going to depend on the onshore distribution network which, unless modernised in the right places, could lead to transmission and distribution network bottlenecks. Given that new network building onshore is in many cases extremely limited due to environmental or legislative factors, lateral thinking is required, as has been the case in other countries around the world. Operators in mainland Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa are using innovative methods that increase the ampacity of existing lines, with minimal impact on the existing network infrastructure. Te key to this is the installation of high temperature low sag conductor technology, which is designed as a ‘drop in’ replacement to increase ampacity by double or more. In the UK, Ofgem has previously cited three main barriers to renewable energy deployment: planning objections, a shortage of wind turbines and access to the high voltage transmission system. While the first two are widely reported – particularly in relation to supply chain requirements – the third is less so. Yet upgrading the existing network infrastructure is vital to
achieving the UK’s mission to have 18GW of viable wind energy by 2020. While we may have had close to 2GW by January 2011, according to the British Wind Energy Association, that’s just part of the bigger picture. It’s obvious really: the plan is for offshore wind
“Given that manufacturers have been experimenting with aluminium for decades, what’s the big difference this time? The breakthrough is in the aluminium’s structure: the outer wires are hardened aluminium zirconium, stranded in either round or trapezoidal wire.”
Mark Gledhill and Allan Russell, 3M.
farms to connect to substations along the UK’s shorelines, but these substations were – in the main – originally built to be the ‘end of the line’. We often use the comparison of trying to use a B road as a motorway. It simply is not feasible to use them to deliver large volumes of wind power in their current state, but nor is replacement typically an option. Land acquisition, planning permission, environmental concerns, cost, time … all these add up to a pretty prohibitive set of obstacles, even when considering underground installation as an alternative to overhead cables. Nor is replacing
existing overhead lines with more of the
existing or traditional power conductors really an option. Traditional conductors – typically ACSR or ACSS – use a combination of steel and aluminium. To date, they’ve done an excellent job: steel is strong, while annealed aluminium is less prone to corrosion and is an effective power conductor. Te problem is that many of these circuits are already thermally constrained and if ampacity was to be increased then sagging would become a problem. Tis cannot always be remedied by raising the towers, as the conductors are typically only designed to operate at 75°C. Te UK is far from alone in facing these
problems, which is why so much R&D work has gone into finding solutions around the world. Tere has been particular emphasis on aluminium:
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