Uprating an Overhead Line. Italian TSO Applications for Integration of RES

Abstract

The increase of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) production units has caused significant changes in the electrical system configuration. The existing structural asset isn’t adequate to dispatch these new power flows that, at same time, should be favorite by various TSOs in order to obtain incentives. The outage of primary substations on the grid and the increase of consumptions have caused growing load currents on existing overhead line. This paper, after introducing thermal resistant conductors and Dynamic Rating (DR) solutions, reports an applications used by TERNA Group S.p.A. (Italian TSO). These systems are already installed on lines and they are contributing to increase power flows thanks to raise by 10-30% of the real time dynamic ratings than the static evaluations. Advantages for electrical systems are many such energy vectors optimizations, congestions reductions, reliability increasing, cross-border power flows increasing, smart grid development.