Thermal Rating of Offshore Wind Farm Cables Installed in Ventilated J-Tubes

Lei You, Jian Wang, Gang Liu, Hui Ma and Ming Zheng
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Lei You: School of Electric Power Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
Jian Wang: School of Electric Power Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
Gang Liu: School of Electric Power Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
Hui Ma: School of ITEE, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4109, Australia
Ming Zheng: Guangdong Electric Power Design Institute Co. Ltd. of China Energy Engineering Group, Guangzhou 510663, China

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-14

Abstract: The section of submarine cable that is installed in enclosed J-tubes represents a possible thermal limiting point along the export circuits of offshore wind farms (OWFs). To obtain higher continuous thermal ratings for J-tube systems, a ventilated design, realized by allowing for the flow of natural wind into the J-tube through vents, is considered in this paper. To evaluate the performance of this forced-ventilation design, a coupled three-dimensional (3D) numerical model is constructed using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. The CFD method is first successfully tested through comparisons with existing methods for enclosed J-tubes. Then, the cable rating for the ventilated design is determined using the CFD model and compared with the rating for the enclosed case. The results show that the cooling effect from forced ventilation is obvious, and the cable rating could be increased by up to 27.5% for a wind speed of 10 m/s. This improvement in rating is especially significant for OWFs where the export circuit output is limited by the cable rating in enclosed J-tubes.

Keywords: J-tube; submarine cable; rating; forced ventilation; wind; computational fluid dynamics (CFD); offshore wind farm (OWF) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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