Methodologies to uprate an overhead line. Italian TSO case study

Abstract

The amount of wind power and other time-variable non-dispatchable electricity generation is rapidly increasing across the world, causing a significant change in the electrical system configuration. The existing structural asset isn't adequate to dispatch these new power that have a priority in the energy dispatching. In addiction the outage of substations on the grid and the increase of consumptions have caused growing load currents. In order to satisfy these needs, TSOs have adopted new measures on existing power lines and N-1 criteria to ensures the electrical grid security. These particular devices are Dynamic Thermal Rating (DTR) systems. After introducing thermal resistant conductors and DTR solutions, the paper reports different applications used by TERNA - 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