Smart cables make power transmission lines smarter

The smart grid construction has triggered an overall transformation of power equipment. The transformer must be more intelligent, the switchgear must be fed back at any time, the relay protection device must be integrated with the primary device, and the cable must be intelligent. “Smart grids have self-diagnosis and self-recovery functions for line requirements, and cable companies need to innovate continuously to produce 'smart cables'.” Zhao Health, deputy director of the High Voltage Institute of China Electric Power Research Institute, said that for ordinary cable products, Need to drive through innovation and develop some self-diagnosed cable products.

What kind of "smart cable" should be? There are experts to illustrate, whether the wire can understand the transmission capacity through the color of the surface, can have temperature sensing function, and the color display can be different at different temperatures. If the wire is conveyed more than 1000A times and exceeds the conveying capacity, the color of the wire will change from white to other colors. If this can be achieved, it will bring great help to the operation of the line. Another example is insulation, which has a self-healing function in the case of discharge, and can recover defects by adding other materials. It is hoped that enterprises will work hard to develop such products, which will also play a significant role in the upgrading and innovation of enterprises.

Some experts believe that the purpose of building a strong smart grid in China is to ensure the safety and reliability of the grid, and to make it easier and more comfortable for people to use it. This requires more reliable grid-related equipment. “The measures to reduce the occurrence of cable faults are the use of qualified cables, the installation of safe cable channels and the laying of regulations, periodic inspections, and status assessments,” said Chen Peiyun, chief engineer of Qingdao Han Cable Co., Ltd., who is currently laying in the EHV cables. Some fiber optic cable can detect its partial discharge through the fiber optic cable, detect its temperature, which is equivalent to a certain sense, these are smart cables.

The supply of dual-ring networks in large cities, the increasingly narrow space corridors, and the increase in underground cable ratios in the city centre have brought great demands for cables. The maintenance-free requirements of cable and the life expectancy of insulation and pressure, and put forward higher requirements for insulation medium, performance indicators and brand reputation of distribution cables.

With more and more applications of cables, coupled with the improvement of reliability requirements for power supply in smart grids, cable faults occur from time to time, and it is urgent to research new and more intelligent cable detection technologies. "The state diagnosis and evaluation of cables is an important technical means for arranging cable replacement reasonably and ensuring the safe and reliable power supply. It is also an extremely important part of effective management of cables in the smart grid." National Wire and Cable Quality Supervision and Inspection Center Director Wu Changshun said.

A cable company saw the business opportunities brought by smart cables and wanted to dig gold in the smart cable field. Recently, the intelligent ultra-flexible fireproof cable successfully developed by Smart Energy passed the full performance type test of “Special Inspection of National Fireproof Building Material Quality Supervision and Inspection Center” and “National Wire and Cable Quality Supervision and Inspection Center”, and the comprehensive performance was identified by relevant experts as At the international advanced level, the products have obtained national invention patents and have been selected for the “2014 Jiangsu Province High-tech Products” list.

Intelligent ultra-flexible fireproof cable adopts synthetic mineral insulation, inorganic expansion and filling new material with ceramic adhesive as carrier, aluminum alloy belt or non-magnetic stainless steel chain interlocking protective layer new structure, with large current-carrying capacity, large cross-section and super-flexibility , Corrosion resistance and resistance to vibration, spray and other excellent features, its insulation can withstand temperatures up to 1000 degrees Celsius, while also ensuring the line in the case of fire in long-term smooth operation, can be called the highest temperature in the industry, the best fire performance Smart cable.

According to expert analysis, with the country's strong support for the construction of smart cities, it is expected that the average annual growth rate of domestic fire-resistant cables will be about 15%. In 2015, the market demand will reach approximately 7.7 billion yuan. The successful listing of intelligent ultra-flexible fire protection cables will also promote Far Eastern smart energy to gain greater profits in the wave of smart city construction.

At present, the application of cables in the fields of transmission grids, distribution networks, user-side, distributed energy applications, solar energy, distributed wind power, etc., under the smart grid environment, the third industrial revolution will include information and renewable energy, The distributed application technology supports the development of fusion, and the cable as a part of it needs to be intelligently considered. Driven by the smart grid construction, the face of the cable industry is changing. The cable industry of “changing its face” is bound to take a more relaxed attitude to meet the arrival of the era of electric power intelligence.