IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO.
3, JULY 2005
Parameter Determination for Modeling System
Transients—Part II: Insulated Cables
IEEE PES Task Force on Data for Modeling System Transients of IEEE PES Working Group on Modeling and Analysis
of System Transients Using Digital Simulation (General Systems Subcommittee)
B. Gustavsen, J. A. Martinez, and D. Durbak
Abstract—EMTP-type programs include dedicated support
routines (cable constants) for calculating an electric representa-
tion of cable systems in terms of a series impedance matrix
and a shunt admittance matrix , based on cable data defined by
geometry and material properties. and are the basic input of
the various cable models that are used in time-domain transient
simulations. This paper discusses the modeling of high-voltage
cables: single-core, three-phase, and pipe-type cables. Material
properties are given for commonly used conductive and insulating
materials, and how to represent semiconductive screens, lossy in-
sulation materials, and magnetic armors is shown. The significance
of the grounding condition of sheaths and armors is discussed.
In transient calculations, it is always important to accurately
represent the core conductor, insulation, semiconductive layers,
and the metallic sheath. Frequency-dependent losses of paper-oil
insulation need to be taken into account for very-high-frequency
transients. The significance of conductors external to the cable
depends on the shielding effect of the cable sheath, which depends
on the sheath design and the frequency content of the transient.
The conclusions are supported by numerical simulation results.
Index Terms—Insulated cables, modeling, power system tran-
sients, simulation.
I. INTRODUCTION
S EVERAL line models have been implemented in com-
monly available EMTP-type programs which can accu-
rately represent the frequency dependence of cable systems
[1]–[3]. All of these models require the same type of input pa-
rameters, namely the series impedance matrix and the shunt
admittance matrix . Sufficiently accurate input parameters
are, in general, more difficult to obtain for cable systems than
for overhead lines as the small geometrical distances make
the cable parameters highly sensitive to errors in the specified
geometry. In addition, it is not straightforward to represent
certain features, such as wire screens, semiconductive screens,
armors, and lossy insulation materials. The situation is made
further complicated by uncertainties in the geometrical data
as provided by the manufacturer as they define guaranteed
measures, but not necessarily the actual measures.
Most EMTP-type programs have dedicated support routines
for calculating cable parameters. These routines have very sim-
ilar features, so hereinafter they will be given the generic name
Manuscript received March 1, 2004; revised August 9, 2004. Paper no.
TPWRD-00106-2004.
Task Force Members: J. A. Martinez (Chairman), D. Durbak, B. Gustavsen,
B. Johnson, J. Mahseredjian, B. Mork, R. Walling.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2005.848774
0885-8977/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
2045
“cable constants” (CC). These programs have some shortcom-
ings in representing certain cable features. The paper provides
guidelines on how to apply CC routines to the most common
types of high-voltage cable systems. The discussion considers
both cables with extruded solid insulation (XLPE, PE) and ca-
bles with oil-impregnated paper.
II. INPUT DATA
The basic equations used to represent overhead lines and in-
sulated cables have the following form:
(1)
(2)
where and are, respectively, the series resistance, se-
ries inductance, shunt conductance, and shunt capacitance per-
unit length of the cable system. These quantities are ma-
trices, being the number of (parallel) conductors of the cable
system. The variable reflects that these quantities are calcu-
lated as function of frequency.
and are calculated by means of CC routines, using cable
geometry and material properties as input parameters. In gen-
eral, users must specify:
1) Geometry
• location of each conductor ( - coordinates);
• inner and outer radii of each conductor;
• burial depth of the cable system.
2) Material properties
• resistivity and relative permeability of all conduc-
tors ( is unity for all nonmagnetic materials);
• resistivity and relative permeability of the surrounding
medium ;
• relative permittivity of each insulating material .
The calculation of and from the geometry and mate-
rial properties follows similar steps for all CC routines. The
reader is referred to [4]–[6] for details. The main challenge is
the impedance calculation which is based on computing sur-
face impedances and transfer impedances of cylindrical metallic
shields, as well as self and mutual ground impedances. CC rou-
tines differ in the actual expressions that are used in the calcula-
tion of these quantities. It is worth noting that these routines take
the skin effect into account but neglect any proximity effects. A
procedure for including proximity effects is given in [7].
2046
TABLE I
RESISTIVITY OF CONDUCTIVE MATERIALS
Fig. 1. Circumferential permeability. Steel wire diameter = 5 mm [8].
III. MATERIAL PROPERTIES
A. Conductive Materials
Table I shows appropriate values for the resistivity of some
common conductor materials.
Stranded conductors need to be modeled as massive conduc-
tors. The resistivity should be increased with the inverse of the
fill factor of the conductor surface so as to give the correct re-
sistance of the conductor.
The resistivity of the surrounding ground depends strongly on
the soil characteristics, ranging from about 1 m (wet soil) to
about 10 k m (rock). The resistivity of sea water lies between
0.1 and 1 m.
Submarine cables are normally designed with (magnetic)
steel armor. The armor consists of a number of steel (round or
square/flat) wires, or of steel tapes. In the case of a wired armor,
the permeability depends on the wire diameter, the laying angle,
and the intensity of the circumferential magnetic field.
Bianchi and Luoni [8] obtained curves for the permeability
of round wire steel armors due to a magnetic field in the cir-
cumferential direction. Their calculations were based on mea-
sured permeability in the longitudinal direction of steel wires,
and an assumption of the permeability in the perpendicular di-
rection lying between 1 and 10. Fig. 1 shows the permeability
in the circumferential direction (magnitude) as function of the
circumferential magnetic field strength, for different lay angles
and depending on the assumed permeability in the perpendic-
ular direction.
B. Insulating Materials
The relative permittivity of the cable main insulation can be
obtained from the manufacturer. Table II shows typical values
for common insulating materials at power frequency. XLPE is
an extruded insulation while mass-impregnated and fluid-filled
denote paper–oil-based insulations.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 3, JULY 2005
TABLE II
RELATIVE PERMITTIVITY OF INSULATION MATERIALS
Fig. 2. Complex permittivity of paper–oil insulation, according to (4).
Most extruded insulations, including XLPE and PE, are
practically lossless up to 1 MHz whereas paper–oil-type in-
sulations exhibit significant losses also at lower frequencies.
The losses are associated with a complex, frequency-dependent
permittivity
(3)
where is the insulation loss factor. Presently, none of the
available CC routines allows to enter a frequency-dependent
loss factor, so a constant value has to be entered. However, this
leads to nonphysical frequency responses which cannot be accu-
rately fitted by frequency-dependent transmission-line models.
Therefore, the loss-angle should instead be specified as zero.
Breien and Johansen [9] fitted a Debye model to the mea-
sured frequency response of insulation samples of a low-pres-
sure fluid-filled cable, in the frequency range 10 kHz–100 MHz.
The permittivity is given as
(4)
The permittivity at zero frequency is real valued and equal to
3.45. It is stated in [9] that the frequency-dependent permittivity
causes additional attenuation of pulses shorter than 5 s. The
frequency variation in (4) is shown in Fig. 2.
Equation (4) is a rational function in frequency , so
its inclusion in a CC routine would yield rational frequency
responses which can be accurately fitted. Therefore, CC rou-
tines should be modified to allow the permittivity to be speci-
fied in a Debye model, see (4), with user-specified parameters.
GUSTAVSEN et al.: PARAMETER DETERMINATION FOR MODELING SYSTEM TRANSIENTS—PART II
TABLE III
PARAMETERS OF SEMICONDUCTIVE LAYERS (INDICATIVE VALUES)
Fig. 3. SC XLPE cable, with and without armor.
Section IX-A shows the effect of insulation losses on a transient
response.
C. Semiconductive Materials
The main insulation of high-voltage cables is always sand-
wiched between two semiconductive layers. This is the case for
both extruded insulation and paper–oil insulation. The electric
parameters of semiconductive screens can vary between wide
limits; Table III gives indicative values for extruded insulation.
For cables with extruded insulation, the resistivity is required by
norm (IEC 60840) to be smaller than 1000 m and 500 m for
the inner and the outer semiconductive layers, respectively. For-
tunately, semiconductive layers can, in most cases, be taken into
account by using a simplistic approach, as shown in Section IV.
IV. SINGLE-CORE SELF-CONTAINED CABLES
Single-core (SC) cable systems are comprised of three sep-
arate cables which are coaxial in nature (Fig. 3). The insula-
tion system can be based on extruded insulation (e.g., XLPE) or
oil-impregnated paper (fluid filled or mass impregnated). The
core conductor can be hollow in the case of fluid-filled cables.
SC cables for high-voltage applications are always designed
with a metallic sheath conductor (Fig. 3). The sheath conductor
can be made of lead, corrugated aluminum, or copper wire. Such
cables are also designed with an inner and an outer semiconduc-
tive screen, which are in contact with the core conductor and
the sheath conductor, respectively. Submarine cables are nor-
mally designed with steel armor to provide additional mechan-
ical strength.
None of the available CC routines permit the user to directly
specify the semiconductive layers. These must therefore be in-
troduced by a modification of the input data. As explained in
[10], semiconductive layers which are in contact with a metallic
conductor can be taken into account by replacing the semicon-
ductors with the insulating material of the main insulation, and
increasing the permittivity of the total insulation so that the elec-
tric capacitance between the core and the sheath remains un-
changed. The validity of this approach has been verified by mea-
surements up to at least 1 MHz [11].
The actual conversion of the permittivity is done as follows:
(5)
2047
Fig. 4. Three-phase cable designs.
where and are the core radius and the sheath inner ra-
dius, respectively; and are the inner and outer insulation
radii, respectively; and is the permittivity of the insulating
material.
The effect of semiconductive layers on the series impedance
is subject to a rigorous treatment in [12].
V. THREE-PHASE SELF-CONTAINED CABLES
Three-phase cables essentially consist of three SC cables
which are contained in a common shell. The insulation system
of each SC cable can be based on extruded insulation or on
paper–oil. Regarding the modeling in CC routines, most cable
designs can be differentiated into the two designs shown in
Fig. 4.
Design #1: one metallic sheath for each SC cable, SC cables
enclosed within metallic pipe (sheath/armor). This design can
be directly modeled using the “pipe-type” representation avail-
able in some CC routines, where “pipe” denotes the common
metallic enclosure. See Section VI.
Design #2: one metallic sheath for each SC cable, SC cables
enclosed within insulating pipe. None of the present CC routines
can directly deal with this type of design due to the common
insulating enclosure. This limitation can be overcome in one of
the following ways.
i) Place a very thin conductive conductor on the inside of
the insulating pipe. The cable can then be represented as
a pipe-type cable in a CC routine.
ii) Place the three SC cables directly in earth (ignore the in-
sulating pipe).
Both options should give reasonably accurate results when
the sheath conductors are grounded at both ends. However, these
approaches are not valid when calculating induced sheath over-
voltages.
The space between the SC cables and the enclosing pipe is
for both designs filled by a composition of insulating mate-
rials; however, CC routines only permit to specify a homoge-
nous material between sheaths and the metallic pipe. Fortu-
nately, the representation of this medium is not very important,
as explained in Section VIII.
VI. PIPE-TYPE CABLES
Pipe-type cables consist of three SC paper cables that are laid
asymmetrically within a steel pipe, which is filled with pressur-
ized low-viscosity oil or gas (Fig. 5). Each SC cable is fitted with
2048
Fig. 5. Pipe-type cable.
a metallic sheath. The sheaths may touch each other. Most CC
routines have an input template available which is specifically
dedicated to this cable design.
VII. GROUNDING OF SHEATHS AND ARMORS
CC routines require users to specify the grounding condi-
tions of metallic sheaths and armors. Grounding a conductor in
a CC routine means that this conductor will be assumed to be on
ground potential at any point along the cable, which results in
the conductor being eliminated from and and, thus, from
the resulting cable model. The main advantage of this option
over manual grounding (i.e., grounding is achieved by placing
a very small resistor between the conductor and ground) is a
shorter simulation time. A disadvantage is that one loses the pos-
sibility of monitoring the current flowing through the eliminated
conductor.
The armor can, in nearly all situations, be assumed to be at
ground potential. In submarine cables, the armor is usually quite
thick; thus preventing any high-frequency flux to penetrate the
armor, so no voltage drop will develop along it. Also, many
submarine cables have a wet construction where the conductive
sea water is allowed to penetrate the armor.
Sheath conductors are usually grounded at both cable ends.
In this situation, the ideal grounding option usually applies be-
cause induced (transient) sheath voltages along the cables are,
in general, very small compared to voltages on core conductors.
Sheaths must, however, be included when high voltages can de-
velop along them. This includes situations with a high ground
potential rise at the cable grounding point (ground fault current,
injection of lightning current), and cross-bonded cable systems.
Their inclusion may also be needed in situations with the sheath
grounded at one end through arresters. The cable sheaths must,
of course, be included in any study of sheath overvoltages.
VIII. SENSITIVITY OF TRANSIENTS TO CABLE PARAMETERS
AND CABLE DESIGN
All cable designs described in this paper (single core, three-
phase, pipe type) are based on three single-core cables having
a core conductor and a sheath conductor. High-frequency cable
transients essentially propagate as decoupled coaxial waves be-
tween cores and sheaths [13], [14], so the transient behavior of
the cable is sensitive to the modeling of the core, main insula-
tion, semiconductors, and the metallic sheath. The sensitivity of
the coaxial wave can be summarized as follows.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 3, JULY 2005
1) Increasing the core resistivity increases the attenuation
and slightly decreases propagation velocity.
2) Increasing the sheath resistivity (or decreasing the sheath
thickness) increases the attenuation.
3) Increasing the insulation permittivity increases the
cable capacitance. This decreases velocity and surge
impedance.
4) With a fixed insulation thickness, adding semiconductive
screens increases the inductance of the core-sheath loop
without changing the capacitance. This decreases velocity
and increases surge impedance.
Since the sheath conductors are normally grounded at both
ends, the potential along this conductor is low as compared to
that of the core conductor, even in transient conditions. As a re-
sult, the simulated transients on phase conductors are insensitive
to the specified properties of insulating materials external to the
sheath.
The magnetic flux external to the sheath is small at frequen-
cies above which the penetration depth is smaller than the
sheath thickness
(6)
It follows that high-frequency transients are not very sensitive
to the conductors/ground external to the sheaths. The shielding
effect increases with decreasing resistance of the sheath.
Some care is needed when modeling armored SC cables at
low and intermediate frequencies as the return path of each
coaxial mode divides between the sheath and the armor. This
makes the propagation characteristics sensitive to the modeling
of the armor (and to the separation distance between the sheath
and armor). The armor permeability now becomes an important
parameter.
In studies of ground fault situations, a significant zero-se-
quence current at power frequency will flow in conductors ex-
ternal to the sheaths (armor, pipe) as the sheath will not shield
the magnetic flux. In such situations, it is necessary to model
the armor/pipe with care as they can strongly affect the zero-
sequence impedance of the cable and, thus, the magnitude of
the fault current.
IX. CALCULATED RESULTS
A. Single-Core Cable
1) Test System: In this example, a system of three 145-kV
SC cables is considered (Fig. 6). The cable design uses a copper
core and XLPE insulation, being the core radius and insulation
thicknesses as those shown in Table IV. Semiconductor layers
are taken into account by using (5).
Using the so-called universal line model (ULM) [3], the
voltage caused by a step voltage excitation is calculated at the
receiving end of a 5-km cable (Fig. 7). All sheaths are treated
as continuously grounded.
2) Sensitivity to Sheath Resistance: The resulting step
voltage is calculated for the following cable sheaths: 1, 2, and
3 mm Pb; 0.215 mm Cu (which represents a 50-mm wire
screen).
GUSTAVSEN et al.: PARAMETER DETERMINATION FOR MODELING SYSTEM TRANSIENTS—PART II
Fig. 6. Cable configuration.
TABLE IV
TEST CABLE PARAMETERS
Fig. 7. Step voltage excitation.
The receiving end voltages are shown in Fig. 8, assuming
1-mm semiconductive layers. It can be seen that reducing the
thickness of the lead sheath from 2 to 1 mm leads to a strong
increase of the attenuation, whereas a reduction from 3 to 2 mm
has little effect. This can be understood by considering that
the dominant frequency component of the transient is about
10 kHz. At this frequency, the penetration depth in lead is
2.4 mm, according to (6). Thus, increasing the thickness of the
lead sheath beyond 2.4 mm will not lead to a significant change
in the response.
3) Sensitivity to Semiconductor Thickness: Assuming a
0.215-mm Cu sheath, the step response is calculated for dif-
ferent thicknesses of the semiconductor layers: 0, 1, 2, 3 mm.
The responses in Fig. 9 show that the semiconductors lead to
a decrease of the propagation speed, as previously explained in
Section VIII.
4) Sensitivity to Insulation Losses: In this example, the
XLPE main insulation is replaced by paper-oil insulation. It
is further assumed that the cable has a 2-mm lead sheath and
no semiconductive screens. The open-end voltage is calculated
by applying a 2 and a 10- s width square-voltage pulse. The
2049
Fig. 8. Effect of sheath design on overvoltage.
Fig. 9. Effect of semiconductor thickness on overvoltage.
simulation is performed with the following representations of
the main insulation:
a) Lossless insulation [i.e., dc value in (4)].
b) Lossy insulation by (4).
Fig. 10 shows an expanded view of the initial transient (re-
ceiving) end. It can be seen that the lossy insulation gives a much
stronger reduction of the peak value for the narrow pulse (2 s)
than that for the lossless insulation. This reduction is an effect of
both attenuation and frequency-dependent velocity. It is further
seen that the travel time of the lossy insulation is smaller than
that of the lossless insulation, which is caused by the reduction
in permittivity at high frequencies, according to (4).
B. Armored Cable
In this example, an armor of 5-mm steel wires and a 5-mm
outer insulation are incorporated into the cable design. It is fur-
ther assumed XLPE main insulation, a 2-mm lead sheath, and
1-mm semiconductive screens. Only one cable is considered.
2050
Fig. 10. Effect of insulation losses on overvoltage.
Fig. 11. Effect of armor permeability on overvoltage.
The resulting voltage of the open-circuit step response is cal-
culated for different values of the armor permeability:
, being the cable length of 50 km, see Fig. 11. It is
seen that increasing the permeability strongly increases the ef-
fective attenuation of the voltage. The reason is that a perme-
ability increase reduces the penetration depth in the armor, thus
increasing the resistance of the inner armor surface impedance.
For a 5-km cable length, the significance of the armor was found
to be small as the magnetic field would not appreciably pene-
trate the sheath conductor, due to the increased frequency of the
transient.
X. CONCLUSION
This paper has considered cable data for simulating transients
on phase conductors of single core cables, three-phase cables,
and pipe-type cables. The main conclusions can be summarized
as follows.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 3, JULY 2005
1) It is always necessary to accurately specify the geom-
etry and material properties of the core conductor, the
main insulation, and the sheath conductor. It is also im-
portant to take the semiconductive layers into account. A
simple procedure for achieving the latter is proposed in
Section IV.
2) Lossy effects of paper-oil insulation lead to a strong atten-
uation and dispersion of narrow pulses. Presently, none of
the existing CC routines can take this into account.
3) The representation of insulating layers external to the
sheath conductors is not very important when the sheaths
are grounded at both ends.
4) The representation of metallic conductors external to the
sheath conductors is important at low frequencies where
the penetration depth exceeds the sheath thickness.
5) Transient voltages can be strongly sensitive to the perme-
ability of any steel armoring when the magnetic field pen-
etrates the sheaths.
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