Cable Capability Review
About Cable Capability Review
For any project or scheme involving power generation, transmission or distribution, it is essential that the electrical design process is comprehensive, thorough and robust, in order to deliver a compliant and efficient installation that meets the relevant design standards and performance requirements. This will ensure that the installation is constructed to the highest quality and will operate safely, reliably and efficiently.
Specifying the right equipment is key to the design process. For example selecting the correct cable design to ensure that the cabling installation is adequately rated for normal load conditions and is able to tolerate fault situations without distress whilst also achieving the lowest possible losses.
Customer Challenge
An investor with interests in multiple distributed generation sites required all cables within the plants to be specified to ensure that they were adequately rated and optimised for low losses.
The cables had been specified and selected by others, based on criteria defined in applicable British Standards as well as International Electrotechnical Comission Standards.
PSE 2 Solution
PSE 2 undertook a review of the cables chosen to verify if they were correctly sized for the full load currents considering the applicable de-rating factors, to ensure that the cable withstand characteristics were adequate for the prevailing fault levels, and to determine the voltage drop, earth loop impedance and power loss values associated with each cable.
Due to the limited timescale available for the work, PSE 2 developed an automated tool which was able to calculate multiple values, i.e. currents, earth loop impedances, voltage drops and power losses based on the initial information of the cable type, lengths, installation methods, protective devices, etc. The tool generated output results that determined whether the cables were correctly selected. The cable calculation tool helped the completion of the cable capability review for all sites within the timescale required. Due to the efficiency of the automated analysis procedure, PSE 2 was able to complete the work in a timely manner for a competitive fee.