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The Western HVDC Link

I did originally answer the previous thread, but have since deleted my response and I believe a new thread with a proper and correct title is the correct way of answering. 


More info on the fault here: https://www.energy-reporters.com/transmission/italys-prysmian-under-fire-over-uk-interconnector-failure/ 


Reports suggest an undersea cable fault in the vicinity of Liverpool Bay. 


Regards,


Alan.
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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Out of interest, how do they go about the testing a HVDC cable of such length? There are surprisingly ambitious subsea HVDC cables planned in the North Sea (100s of miles), presumably with some level of multiple redundancy. I'm not so much interested in the transformer side - I'm sure it's incredibly complicated but it's also reasonably accessible!


    In my early career I worked in an industry involving a variety of cable diagnostics, so I have a passing interest. For example they had TDR (time domain reflectometry, basically spamming an AC signal down the line and looking at the backscatter/delay from impedance changes), multi-hub integrity measurements, while some rather fancy options put a dual-frequency AC signal along the cable and measured the current at various distances in order to find insulation problems/shorts (it worked surprisingly well over 30-60km gas pipelines, depending on what you were looking for). I think there were also fibre-optic acoustic noise solutions that could detect noise/likely impacts.
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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Out of interest, how do they go about the testing a HVDC cable of such length? There are surprisingly ambitious subsea HVDC cables planned in the North Sea (100s of miles), presumably with some level of multiple redundancy. I'm not so much interested in the transformer side - I'm sure it's incredibly complicated but it's also reasonably accessible!


    In my early career I worked in an industry involving a variety of cable diagnostics, so I have a passing interest. For example they had TDR (time domain reflectometry, basically spamming an AC signal down the line and looking at the backscatter/delay from impedance changes), multi-hub integrity measurements, while some rather fancy options put a dual-frequency AC signal along the cable and measured the current at various distances in order to find insulation problems/shorts (it worked surprisingly well over 30-60km gas pipelines, depending on what you were looking for). I think there were also fibre-optic acoustic noise solutions that could detect noise/likely impacts.
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