Transient Disturbances Based Non-Intrusive Ageing Condition Assessment for Cross-Bonded Cables

The cross-bonding is the most common shield/sheath-bonding system now in use on single-conductor shielded power cables for long distance power transmission. But the complex bonding brings great challenges to the assessment of cable ageing conditions. This paper proposes a non-intrusive ageing assessment method using the transient disturbances originating from the system. The cable relative permittivities, instead of the traditional dielectric loss angle, were extracted from the responses of the transient disturbances to character the ageing state more sensitively. The decoupling analysis of the cross-bonded cable and the corresponding relative permittivity identification model were investigated. Since the transient disturbances appear naturally and frequently, a continuous tracking of the cable ageing conditions can be established without interferences to the power system. Moreover, only the magnitudes rather than the phase angles of the cable currents/voltages are required in this method, which effectively simplifies the functions of the signal acquisition devices. The proposed method provides a new idea to assess the ageing conditions of the cross-bonded cables, and has the potential to be applied in industry.