Electric Network Power Transfer Flexibility - Focusing on Power Conductors Electro-Mechanical Behavior

Power and energy utilities are obliged to tackle the inevitable results of the transformation strategies involving integrating high-shares of clean energy sources. The traditional solution of building new OHLs has been substituted by re-conductoring through bigger size or high-temperature conductor technologies to maintain the OHL system clearances. Existing literature models conductor vibration and fatigue based on a homogenized conductor structure. This paper establishes a Finite Element Model (FEM) in COMSOL (c) to enable examining vibration and fatigue of the different sizes and types of the OHL conductor's complex geometries. The simulations of the free vibration and tension-strain of the modelled geometry are corroborated with the experimental data. The FEM simulations for the single and multi-layered composite conductors show that conductor vibration and fatigue responses are not always linear with the change in vibration amplitudes. Hence, re-assessing the flexibility of the network capacity by re-tensioning conductors depends on the conductor type and operating conditions.