IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO.
2, APRIL 2005
Maximum Lightning Overvoltage Along a Cable
Protected by Surge Arresters
Thor Henriksen, Bjørn Gustavsen, Senior Member, IEEE, Georg Balog, and Ulf Baur
Abstract—This paper presents a procedure for calculating the
maximum lightning overvoltage along a cable which is protected
by arresters at both ends. It is shown that the most severe cable
overvoltages that can occur (close back-flashover) will appear at a
distance from the remote cable end which is in the order of some
hundred meters. The maximum voltage is calculated by adding
the peak value of the voltage wave in the forward direction and
the peak value of the voltage wave in the backward direction. The
location of the maximum voltage is obtained by considering the
difference in time instants at which the peak value occurs at the
remote end. This procedure only requires to calculate the voltage
at the cable ends and the surge arrester current. The forward and
backward waves can then be calculated by simple expressions. The
procedure is demonstrated for a 300 kV system, for different cable
lengths.
Index Terms—Insulated cable, insulation coordination, over-
voltage, transients.
I. INTRODUCTION
L IGHTNING overvoltages must be taken into account when
designing the insulation system of a cable. The required
lightning impulse voltage withstand capability (BIL) is defined
in norms (e.g., IEC 60071-2) as specified levels of a 1.2/50
impulse voltage. IEC specifies one, two, or three BIL levels for
each system voltage, thus giving the customer some room for
adapting the BIL to the actual lightning overvoltage conditions.
The manufacturer is simply required to produce cables that sat-
isfy the lightning test voltages.
CIGRE WG B1-05 is currently undertaking a study to assess
the maximum voltage stress on long cables. This study is moti-
vated by the possibility of reducing the required test voltage for
long cables that are protected by arresters, as the cable atten-
uation may reduce the maximum cable voltage well below the
existing BIL’s.
The resulting overvoltage at the cable ends has been sub-
ject to several investigations, e.g. [1]–[3], while in reality the
maximum voltage may occur inside the cable. This maximum
voltage can be found by calculating the voltage at selected po-
sitions along the cable. This can be done by subdividing the
cable into a number of small sections but error accumulation
Manuscript received March 1, 2004; revised June 16, 2004. This work was
supported by Nexans Norway AS, The Norwegian Grid Company (Statnett SF),
and by the Norwegian Research Council. Paper no. TPWRD-00099-2004.
T. Henriksen and B. Gustavsen are with SINTEF Energy Research, N-7465
Trondheim, Norway (e-mail: thor.henriksen@sintef.no; bjorn.gustavsen@
sintef.no).
G. Balog is with Nexans Norway AS, N-0605 Oslo, Norway (e-mail:
georg.balog@nexans.com).
U. Baur is with Statnett SF, N-0302 Oslo, Norway (e-mail: ulf.baur@
statnett.no).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2005.844262
0885-8977/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
859
may lead to inaccurate results. Ref. [4] presents an improved
approach where a regular line model is used for obtaining the
voltages and currents at the line ends which are next used in the
calculation at internal points using an off-line time step. How-
ever, in the case of steep-fronted lightning surges, the maximum
voltage can only be determined with good accuracy if one of
the selected positions is sufficiently close to the position of the
maximum voltage. In [7] is presented an analysis of the max-
imum voltage inside distribution cables from lightning strokes
based on analysis by lattice diagrams. However, that analysis
does not cover the cable attenuation effects found in long trans-
mission cables and does also not consider the exact position of
maximum voltage.
This paper presents an alternative method for calculating the
maximum voltage along a cable and its location. The analysis
considers the situation of a cable inserted in an overhead line that
is protected by arresters at both ends and is subjected to light-
ning overvoltages. Such overvoltages are either due to shielding
failure or back-flashover. It is possible to limit the peak current of
strokes causing shielding failure by a proper design of the shield
wires [6]. This implies that the corresponding overvoltages can
be limited to a level below the overvoltages due to back-flashover.
Shielding failures are therefore not considered in this paper. An
analysis is provided which explains the phenomena that result
in the maximum voltage. This analysis results in a procedure for
calculating the maximum cable voltage and its location based on
the forward and backward traveling voltage waves at the cable
ends. These quantities are obtained via the cable voltage and the
arrester current, which can easily be calculated using EMTP-type
programs. The application of the procedure is shown for a 300 kV
system for different cable lengths.
II. ANALYSIS
A. Maximum Cable Voltage
We consider the situation of a cable inserted in an overhead
line, see Fig. 1. The length of the two parts of the overhead line
is infinite. The cable is at both ends protected by arresters. Our
objective is to calculate the maximum overvoltage experienced
by the cable, due to a lightning stroke to the connected overhead
line.
The voltage at any point along the cable can be expressed
as the sum of a forward and a backward propagating
wave, i.e.,
(1)
where is generated at end A and is generated at end B.
860 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005

Fig. 1. Cable system.

The arrester current and the voltage at the ends of the cable
can be calculated by an EMTP-type program, but the traveling
waves are normally not available.
It is assumed that no wave enters the cable from the overhead
line at end B (Fig. 1). The following equation is valid when
the characteristic impedances and are assumed constant,
i.e., independent of the frequency:

(2)
Fig. 2. Reflected voltage wave and arrester voltage as function of incoming
voltage wave, in p.u. of arrester protective level.
There are three contributions to the current in (2). The first
one is the current fed into the arrester when is zero
(grounded). This contribution equals twice the incoming cur-
rent wave. The second/third contribution is the current fed into
the cable/line when there is no incoming wave.
The arrester voltage equals if one ignores the voltage
drop along the arrester leads and the ground potential rise, more
about this in Section II-D. With and computed by
EMTP, (2) gives the forward wave . The reflected (back-
ward) wave is further found from (1). The reflected
wave depends on the instantaneous value of the incoming wave
only.
Fig. 2 shows the calculated arrester voltage and the reflected
voltage wave when and . The results
are shown for a selected arrester characteristic (Appendix A)
and for an ideal characteristic. The protective level is 636 kV at
10 kA for both characteristics and that voltage is used as p.u.
reference. It is seen that maximum value of the reflected wave
is significantly higher when applying the ideal characteristic.
It is therefore important to apply the actual characteristic in a Fig. 3. Example of voltage at cable end (top) and at the position where the
computation. maximum voltage occurs (bottom).
The ratio between reflected wave and the incoming wave de-
creases when the incoming wave increases. A maximum value reflected wave. This means that the voltage at the end of the
for the reflected wave is thus obtained for a certain value of the cable becomes less than the sum of the two maxima since they
incoming wave as can be observed in Fig. 2. An incremental in- do not appear simultaneously. However, the two maxima appear
crease in the incoming wave at that point gives zero increment in simultaneously at some distance from the end of the cable. This
the reflected wave. This implies that the maximum value of the is demonstrated in Fig. 3. The peak value of the incoming (for-
reflected wave appears when in parallel with ward) wave at the end of the cable appears at . The re-
corresponds to a reflection-free termination of the cable. That flected (backward) wave is determined from Fig. 2 and its peak
condition occurs when the arrester voltage is 0.83 p.u and the value appears at . The figure shows further the voltage
current is 828 A. It should be noted that the reflected wave is re- at distance from the end of the cable. The travel time corre-
duced if the incoming wave increases above the value that cor- sponding to is 2 and it seen that peak value of the forward
responds to the maximum reflected wave. and the backward wave occurs simultaneously at . This
The incoming voltage wave starts from zero value and reaches position therefore gives the maximum voltage along the cable.
a maximum after some time. The reflected wave obtains its max- The maximum voltage occurs at a distance given by
imum value before the incoming wave does, if the latter max-
imum value is higher than the value that causes the maximum (3)
HENRIKSEN et al.: MAXIMUM LIGHTNING OVERVOLTAGE ALONG A CABLE PROTECTED BY SURGE ARRESTERS
Fig. 4. Maximum of arrester voltage and cable voltage as function of
maximum of incoming wave.
where is the cable propagation velocity and is the time
difference between the two maxima at the end of the cable (i.e.
the maximum of the reflected wave and the maximum of the
incoming wave).
Fig. 4 shows the maximum voltage along the cable and the
voltage at end B (which equals the arrester voltage). The max-
imum voltage appears at the end when the incoming wave is less
or equal to the value that corresponds to the maximum reflected
wave in Fig. 2.
The actual incoming wave at end B can for a specific case be
determined by (2) once the arrester current and the voltage at
the remote have been obtained.
B. Power Frequency Voltage
The instantaneous value of the power frequency voltage can
be assumed to be constant along the cable. It can be shown that
(1) and (2) are still valid when , and are interpreted as
the additional voltage due to the lightning. The arrester voltage
at the remote end now becomes where is the in-
stantaneous value of the power frequency voltage. Fig. 5 shows
that the value of the reflected wave is strongly influenced by
the power frequency voltage. The selected values of the power
frequency voltage are the extreme instantaneous values corre-
sponding to the system voltage of the selected arrester.
The maximum value of the reflected wave decreases when
increases. However, the influence on the maximum cable
voltage is not obvious since a high value for is equivalent
to an unfavorable offset.
C. Wave Attenuation Effects
Losses will for long cables cause a reduction of the peak value
of the forward wave when traveling from the exposed end to the
remote end. This reduction has so far not been taken properly
861
Fig. 5. Reflected wave as function of incoming wave for different values of
instantaneous value v of power frequency voltage.
into account. The first step is to use an adequate frequency de-
pendent cable model when calculating the voltage at both ends
of the cable. This results in that the calculation of the incoming
and the reflected wave at the remote end by (1) and (2) takes
the peak reduction properly into account. Therefore, the peak
value of the two waves can be used to calculate the maximum
voltage in the vicinity of the remote end. This approach neglects
any damping effect within from the remote end. However,
such effects are according to our experience not significant for
the severe lightning cases.
It is further our experience that backward waves do not con-
tribute to the maximum voltage in the vicinity of the exposed
end for cables with a significant reduction in the peak value of
the forward voltage wave. This implies that the peak value of
the forward wave can be calculated assuming an infinite cable
length. Some studies involve a variable cable length and we have
found it suitable for such studies to introduce the parameter
for the ratio between the peak value of the forward wave at
and at . This gives the relation
(4)
where is the maximum voltage along the cable in the
vicinity of the remote end. This result must always be compared
with the maximum voltage at the exposed end.
D. Inductance of Arrester Leads
The leads that connect the arrester to the cable/line joint have
an inductance that can have a significant influence on the pro-
tective effect of the arrester. This inductive effect is easily taken
into account in an EMTP-type analysis. Such an analysis gives
the voltage and the arrester current in each end of the cable. The
incoming and the reflected wave at the remote end can still be
found from (1) and (2). Note that the curves in Figs. 2, 4, and 5
are no longer applicable since the reflected wave is no longer a
function of the instantaneous value of the incoming wave.
862 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005

Fig. 6. Backflashover in second tower.

III. APPROACH
From the previous analysis can be summarized the following
approach for calculating the maximum lightning overvoltage
along a cable protected by arresters at both ends.
1) Use an EMTP-type program for computing the arrester
current and the cable voltage at the cable ends.
2) Calculate the incoming and reflected voltage waves at the Fig. 7. Impinging voltage and corresponding arrester current. Infinite cable.
remote cable end using (2) and (1).
3) Calculate the maximum cable voltage in the vicinity of the
remote end as the sum of the peak value for the incoming
wave and the peak value for the reflected wave.
4) Calculate the distance from the remote cable end to
the location of the maximum voltage using (3).
5) Compare the obtained maximum voltage with the voltage
at the exposed end
6) The approach gives a too high value if is greater than
the length of the cable. Such cases must be investigated
individually.

IV. APPLICATION EXAMPLE

A. Case
The methodology is demonstrated for a lightning overvoltage
study of a 300 kV system, see simplified illustration in Fig. 6.
The complete model is given in Appendix B. The model is in
several aspects rather simple because the main focus here is to
demonstrate the application of the methodology. The situation
considered is that a 200 kA lightning current with 1 front
time and infinite time to half value strikes the tower top in the
second tower. This causes a back-flashover in the struck tower.
(Note that the voltages in this section are presented in p.u. of the
system voltage, i.e. 1. p.u. equals .)
B. Voltage at Exposed Cable End
Fig. 7 shows the resulting cable voltage at the exposed end
and the corresponding arrester current when assuming a cable of
infinite length. The voltage has a very steep front and reaches a
peak value of 2.61 p.u. The time to half value is about 33 . This
decay is mainly caused by multiple wave reflections between the
cable end and towers—the time to half value of the lightning
current was assumed to be infinite.
C. 9 km Cable
Fig. 8 shows the incoming and reflected voltage wave at
the remote end when the cable length is 9 km. The maximum
Fig. 8. Reflected and incident voltage wave at remote cable end (9 km cable).
voltage along a cable of finite length will appear at a distance
from the remote end. The time difference corresponding
to in (3) is 5 in Fig. 8. This gives . Fig. 9
shows the voltage at the remote cable end and the voltage
450 m from that end. The peak voltage is 3.61 p.u., which
agrees closely with the sum of the peak value of the two waves
. (The small discrepancy is due to
discretization in position and time.) It is noted that this voltage
(3.61 p.u.) is 38% higher than the peak voltage at the exposed
end (2.61 p.u.).
D. 500 m Cable
Reducing the cable length from 9 km to 500 m causes a dis-
tinct change in the incoming wave at the remote end, see Fig. 10.
This result occurs because the reflected wave at the remote end
HENRIKSEN et al.: MAXIMUM LIGHTNING OVERVOLTAGE ALONG A CABLE PROTECTED BY SURGE ARRESTERS
Fig. 9. Voltage waves at remote end and voltage 450 m from remote end.
(Expanded time scale, 9 km cable).
Fig. 10. Reflected and incident voltage wave at remote cable end (500 m
cable).
becomes reflected again when it meets the exposed end. The
maximum voltage occurs at about from the re-
mote end and reaches 4.06 p.u., see Fig. 11. Again, the max-
imum voltage inside the cable (450 m from B) is higher than at
the exposed end.
The incoming wave at the remote end is practically equal to
the generated wave at the exposed end except for the time delay.
Comparing Figs. 7 and 10 shows that the incoming wave at the
exposed end causes an increase in the wave propagating in pos-
itive direction at about 10 in Fig. 10. This increase
has a short duration followed by a decrease. The arrester current
863
Fig. 11. Voltage at exposed end and voltage 50 m from exposed end.
(Expanded time scale, 500 m cable).
is about 8 kA, which means that the contribution to the gener-
ated wave from the incoming one becomes negative if there were
no inductance between the arrester and the cable. The positive
contribution is therefore due to the inductance arrester leads.
V. MAXIMUM VOLTAGE AS FUNCTION OF CABLE LENGTH
The most severe cable overvoltages can be expected to result
from back-flashover near the cable end. It is realistic to assume
that the front time of the impinging voltage (exposed end) is
shorter than 10 . This amounts to a travel distance of about
1600 m so that the maximum voltage will occur near the remote
end (less than 800 m). In reality, the frequency dependency of
the propagation function causes the front time to increase as the
wave propagates along the cable, but this does not necessarily
increase since the peak value is reduced as well. The max-
imum will therefore still occur in the vicinity of the remote end.
In the following is calculated the reduction factor in (4)
for the peak value of the incoming wave at the remote end for a
300 kV XLPE cable using a frequency dependent cable model.
Fig. 12 shows the trace for when is assumed equal
to the impinging voltage shown in Fig. 7.
The peak value of the reflected wave at the remote end can
be obtained by combining the trace for with the
relation between incoming and reflected wave in Fig. 2. This
approach neglects the inductance of the arrester leads at the re-
mote end, but the influence of this inductance is not significant
for long cables. Thus, with the peak value of the incoming and
reflected wave known as function of the cable length, the max-
imum cable voltage can be calculated as function of the cable
length. This is shown in Fig. 13. In addition is shown by dots the
maximum cable voltage at some selected lengths as calculated
by a frequency dependent discretized line model [5]. The close
agreement by the two approaches validates the methodology de-
veloped in this paper. The maximum voltage by the discretized
864
Fig. 12. Reduction factor k as function of cable length.
Fig. 13. Maximum cable voltage as function of cable length.
model was for all cable lengths found to occur within 1.5 km
from the remote end.
The approach based on (4) does not take into account the in-
crease in the maximum value of the forward wave demonstrated
in Fig. 10. That increase is due to the reflection at the exposed
end of the backward wave generated at the remote end. The re-
flection appears with a time delay equal to twice the travel time
of the cable. The reflection increases the peak value of the for-
ward wave only when the impinging voltage at that time is at a
rather high level. Some additional investigations for the actual
example showed that the increase occurred only when the cable
is less than 1.5 km. The reflection may influence even when
the peak value of is not influenced. Practical experience
has however shown that this is not the case.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005
VI. DISCUSSION
It was shown in Section II-A that the maximum voltage along
the cable can be calculated by adding the peak value of the for-
ward voltage wave and the peak value of the backward voltage
wave. It was further shown that the maximum voltage occurs at
a distance from the remote end given as half the time differ-
ence between the occurrence of the two peak values multiplied
with the propagation velocity in the cable. A high value for
may result in inaccurate results since the proposed approach ne-
glects damping effects within . However, these effects are not
significant when is less than a few kilometers.
The most severe lightning overvoltages in cables result from
back-flashover. It can be shown that the highest overvoltages
occur for a lightning current with a small front time striking the
line close to the cable entrance. In these cases, the front time
of the impinging voltage is in the order of a few , as is evi-
dent in Fig. 7. Therefore, will in general be a small quan-
tity and the maximum voltage will occur within some hundred
meters from the remote end for a short cable. Distortion of the
forward wave causes an increase in , but it is our experience
that will remain less that two kilometers, even for long ca-
bles. One important reason is that becomes zero when the
peak value of the forward voltage wave becomes less or equal
to the value that causes the maximum reflected wave. There-
fore, the approach outlined in this paper will be applicable to
most practical situations of interest. Further results (not shown
in paper) have also verified the applicability of the approach for
close shielding failures.
The approach is not suitable when the cable length becomes
less than . The maximum voltage along such cables depends
strongly on the front steepness of the impinging voltage How-
ever, the most severe cases have a very high steepness and it is
reasonable to assume that the practical lower limit is less than
400 m. When not applicable, one has to use alternative proce-
dures, for instance the model in [4].
VII. CONCLUSIONS
This paper has analyzed lightning overvoltages in a cable
which is inserted in an overhead line and protected by surge ar-
resters at both ends. A procedure is shown for calculating the
maximum voltage and its location:
1) The maximum voltage along the cable is calculated by
adding the peak value of the forward voltage wave at the
remote end with the peak value of the backward voltage
wave at the same location.
2) The maximum occurs at a distance from the remote
end, given as half the time difference between the occur-
rence of the two peak values at the remote end, multiplied
with the propagation velocity in the cable.
3) When the peak value of the forward wave at the remote
end is smaller than a certain value, the maximum voltage
occurs at one of the cable ends.
4) The forward and backward voltage waves are obtained by
(2) and (1) in the paper, which requires to calculate the
voltage at the cable ends and the arrester current using an
EMTP-type program.
HENRIKSEN et al.: MAXIMUM LIGHTNING OVERVOLTAGE ALONG A CABLE PROTECTED BY SURGE ARRESTERS
Fig. 14. Simulation model.
5) The method allows easy calculation of the maximum
cable voltage as function of the cable length.
APPENDIX
A. Surge Arrester Current-Voltage Characteristic
B. Simulation Model
Fig. 14 shows the basic configuration. Four spans of the ex-
posed overhead line are assumed lossless and they are repre-
sented by a two conductor distributed parameter model (phase
conductor and two ground wires in parallel). The associated
characteristic impedance is
(B.1)
A flashover is assumed to take place at each tower except for
the tower closest to the cable entrance, when the magnitude of
the voltage between the phase conductor and the tower exceeds
1000 kV. The voltage drop along the corresponding towers is
not taken into account, but a constant footing resistance equal
30 is included as shown in the figure.
A two conductor model is used for the cable with character-
istic impedance
(B.2)
Only the coaxial mode of propagation gives a significant
contribution to the cable voltage. The associated characteristic
865
impedance is and the resistance and
propagation velocity is 0.316 and 174 , respec-
tively. These values apply to Figs. 7–11.
No flashover occurs in the right part of the line and the ground
wires are neglected in that part of the line. The arrester charac-
teristic is the same as in appendix A and the leads are repre-
sented by inductances based on 1 and 8 m length.
The common grounding resistance for the cable screen, the
arrester and the adjacent tower is 1 . This low value was chosen
because the overvoltage along the cable increases when the re-
sistance decreases.
REFERENCES
[1] E. W. Greenfield, “Transient behavior of short and long cables,” IEEE
Trans. Power Apparat. Syst., vol. 103, no. 11, pp. 3193–3204, Nov. 1984.
[2] S. A. Probert, Y. Song, P. K. Basac, and C. P. Ferguson, “Re-appraisal
of the basic impulse level (BIL) for 400 kV underground cables using
EMTP/ATP,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Power System Transients (IPST), Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, 2001, paper 011.
[3] J. Huse, K. Olsen, and T. Ulriksen, “Lightning overvoltages in cable
connections,” Electra, no. 58, pp. 81–93, 1978.
[4] L. Marti and H. W. Dommel, “Calculation of voltage profiles along trans-
mission lines,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 993–998, Apr.
1997.
[5] B. Gustavsen and J. Mahseredjian, “A wide band voltage profile trans-
mission line component for the EMTP,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., to be
published.
[6] “Guide to Procedures for Estimating the Lightning Performance of
Transmission Lines,” CIGRE Tech. Rep. 63, WG33-01, Oct. 1991.
[7] J. A. Martinez and F. Gonzalez-Molina, “Surge protection of under-
ground distribution cables,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 15, no. 2, pp.
756–763, Apr. 2000.
Thor Henriksen was born in Trondheim, Norway, in 1946. He received the
M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Norwegian Institute of Tech-
nology in 1970, and the Dr.-Ing. degree in 1973.
He is presently working at SINTEF Energy Research as a Senior Research
Scientist, mainly in the field of transient studies.
Bjørn Gustavsen (M’94–SM’03) was born in Harstad, Norway, in 1965. He
received the M.Sc. and Dr.-Ing. degrees from the Norwegian Institute of Tech-
nology, Trondheim, in 1989 and 1993, respectively.
Currently, he is with SINTEF Energy Research, Trondheim. His interests in-
clude simulation of electromagnetic transients and modeling of frequency-de-
pendent effects. He spent 1996 as a Visiting Researcher at the University of
Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, and the summer of 1998 at the Manitoba HVDC
Research Centre, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. He was a Marie Curie Fellow at the
University of Stuttgart, Germany, from August 2001 to August 2002.
866
Georg Balog was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1941. He received the M.Sc.
degree in electrical engineering at the Norwegian Institute of Technology,
Trondheim, in 1969.
He was with SINTEF Energy Research from 1970 to 1972, working with in-
sulation related technical projects. Since 1972 he has been with Nexans working
with the development of HVAC and HVDC submarine cables. Currently he is
the Manager of Nexan’s Competence Centre for Submarine Cables and Umbil-
icals, Norway.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005
Ulf Baur was born in Göteborg, Sweden, in 1952. He received the M.Sc. degree
in electrical engineering from Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, in
1976.
He joined the Swedish State Power Board. From 1980 to 1985, he worked
with high voltage power applications at the Joint European Torus, Oxfordshire,
U.K., after which he joined ABB, Ludvika, Sweden. Among other positions at
ABB, he headed the Office for Insulation Coordination of HVDC Links. He is
currently mainly working with HVDC and system related questions at Statnett,
Oslo, Norway.