Underground aluminium tube carries 380,000 volts

The building of a new runway at Frankfurt Airport means

changes are having to be made to an extra-high voltage
transmission line that crosses the planned approach path.
Experts from Siemens and the electricity company RWE will
therefore lay a one-kilometre-long section of the 380,000-volt
line underground. Aluminium has been chosen as the con-
ductor material.

This will be the world’s first commercially installed gas-

isolated extra-high voltage line so the companies in the con-
sortium had to develop the new technology required.

The current-carrying conductor is enclosed in a casing tube,

with the interspace filled with an insulating gas. The conduc-
tor itself is in the form of an aluminium tube. High-purity alu-
minium is characterised by excellent electrical conductivity
and at the same time is also readily formable – two proper-
ties to which particular importance is attached for this spe-
cific application.

The go-ahead has now been given for the seven-million-euro

project. Excavators have been digging a 10-metre wide
trench for the tube since April. The new transmission line is
scheduled to be connected to the Kelsterbach transformer
substation in the spring of 2010. Once this approach has
proven itself in practice, other transmission lines using this
technology will doubtless follow.
______________________________________

Your contact:

Anncathrin Wener
Public Relations

Gesamtverband der Aluminiumindustrie e.V.

Telefon: 02 11 - 47 96 282
Telefax: 02 11 - 46 96 410
E-Mail: anncathrin.wener@aluinfo.de

1/1