CIRED

20th International Conference on Electricity Distribution

Prague, 8-11 June 2009 Paper 0163

MAGNETIC FIELD MITIGATION OF POWER CABLE BY HIGH MAGNETIC COUPLING PASSIVE LOOP
Aldo Canova Politecnico di Torino Dip. Ing. Elettrica, Italy aldo.canova@polito.it Luca Giaccone Politecnico di Torino Dip. Ing. Elettrica, Italy luca.giaccone@polito.it magnetic field are generally low (expressed in units of magnetic induction in micro-and milli tesla) ferromagnetic shields require the use of materials characterized by a high magnetic permeability at low magnetic fields (called initial magnetic permeability ). The passive conductive shield are characterized by sheets of conductive material, typically aluminium or copper, whose operating principle is based on the electromagnetic induction law: the magnetic field produced by the sources induces Foucault currents in the shield slabs which generate an opposite field. In order to ensure good mitigation performances it is necessary that the plates which compose the shield are well joined among themselves to ensure a good electrical continuity of the shield. Optimisation procedure can provide minimisation of cost and shielding factor improvement (defining as shielding factor the ratio between the magnetic field in the absence and in presence of the shield) [5-6-7]. A special type of conductive shield is represented by the passive loops. These shields are made of electrical conductors (typically the same electric cables used for the transport and distribution) connected each other to create closed loops. The behaviour principle is again based on the electromagnetic induction law with the difference that in this case the induced currents are confined inside the shield conductors. This kind of shield is used both for buried cable and overhead power lines [8-9]. The passive shields are characterized by relatively low induced currents, due to the low magnetic coupling with the source, and relatively low shielding factors. They have the advantage that no active components are present and they assure the self regulation of the shield current according to the source one. Finally, in order to increase the induced current in the passive loops, capacitors are inserted in the loops for compensating their inductance [10]. This action allows the minimization of the impedance of the loops and gives a time lag between induced and source current of about 90 degrees (the best would be to obtain a phase displacement of about 180). Finally, there are passive screen solutions consisting of a mixture of ferromagnetic and conductive media. They are generally composed of sheets of conductive and ferromagnetic material. Regarding active shields they are generally made of electrical conductors forming mesh more or less complex that, unlike the passive shields, are powered by current generators properly controlled. If the supply current changes the magnetic field varies, it is necessary to control the current in the shield. For this reason this technique

ABSTRACT
In this paper a new concept of passive loop technique called High Magnetic Coupling Passive Loop is presented. The proposed shield is characterised by high performances and takes all the advantages of passive and active shields. The shielding technique can be adopted in different application field: power lines, busbar systems, line transformer connections, etc.. In the present paper the proposed shielding technique is applied to the junction zone of a high voltage buried power line.

INTRODUCTION
The electromagnetic pollution is an open subject because of the possible effects on human health and for electromagnetic compatibility problem. These are the reason because magnetic field mitigation is an open challenge for researcher [1]. Limiting to the case of low frequency, one of the most significant sources are represented by power lines (overhead line, buried cable, busbar, etc.) adopted in transport and distribution of electric energy [2]. In particular in the recent years a significant increasing of buried cable installations in urban environment, also for high voltage power lines, occurred. The concern of people, on the one hand, and restrictions on the levels of maximum field on the other hand, has put in many situations the need to make a careful verification of the levels of field and to adopt in some cases mitigation systems. Magnetic shield adopted for the mitigation of the field produced by buried power cables are mainly divided into two broad categories: passive and active shields. The former are characterized by the fact that does not require external power sources that feed them while the second require external power. In both cases, the shields are placed close to the source and region where one wants to mitigate the magnetic field. With regard to passive shields, they can be divided into two more categories: ferromagnetic shields and conductive shields [3-4]. The former are usually made of slabs of ferromagnetic material which intercepting the magnetic field allow the shielding by reducing it in the surrounding region. Typically these systems are used in case of underground lines and slabs of ferromagnetic materials are placed underground close to the power line. Since the values of the

CIRED2009 Session 2

Paper No 0163

CIRED

20th International Conference on Electricity Distribution

Prague, 8-11 June 2009 Paper 0163

requires a measure of the magnetic field strength in the region to be shielded and a control system which modulates the current in the shield at the desired value [11-12]. The main advantage offered by this system is represented by the high shielding factor performance. By contrast, as well as a greater cost of the system, in the presence of a wrong control, the active shield can become a new source and can increase the field pollution produced by the source (the cure is worse than the disease!). This type of shield has some applications in the overhead power lines but it is characterised by high cost. In the present paper a novel concept of passive loop characterized by a high magnetic coupling with the source is presented. In the next paragraph the shielding technique is presented and discussed and finally in the third section some possible optimised configuration, for the case of buried cable lines, are reported.

o' Shielding cables

Source cables

Figure 2: HMCPL geometrical layout Although the base idea is very simple, due to technical reasons sometimes it is not possible to install the shield close to the power lines, Fig. 2. Therefore an optimal design has to be done. In fact the geometrical displacement is no more simply defined and also the correct amplitude value of the shielding currents has to be determined. It is possible to impose in the shield a portion of the source current by using a coil for supply the shield which introduce something like a transformer ratio, see Fig. 2. Therefore thinking at the core like a transformer with ratio Ksh=N2/N1 the current in the shield is I = I s .
sh

HIGH MAGNETIC COUPLING PASSIVE LOOP

The High Magnetic Coupling Passive Loop (HMCPL) allows the mitigation of the field produced by a group of conductors crossed by current (power line) through another system of conductors which have high magnetic coupling with the source cables of the power line and the right geometrical displacement. Moreover the shielding cables have to be crossed by the right current (amplitude and phase) with respect to the current in the source conductors. The simplest layout of the HMCPL is shown in Fig. 1. The passive loop principle is based on the Faradays induction law, hence the alternating magnetic flux due to the source creates an induced current in the loop in such a way that the magnetic field produced attempts to compensate the original field (Lenzs Law). In the standard passive loop the magnetic coupling is done in air (low coupling) while in HMCPL the magnetic cores are introduced in order to reach an high magnetic coupling between source and shield. With these cores it is possible to induce in the shield a current (Ish) with opposite phase with respect to the source one (Is) while usually, between source and induced current, in a typical passive loop there are 90. The magnetic cores have to be carefully designed in order to avoid saturation effect when the power lines bring his rated current but this point is not the issue of this paper.
Magnetic core Shielding Cables Source cables

K sh

Moreover the phase splitting method can be used, therefore each phase of the shield can be divided in more than one cables in parallel.

HV POWER LINE: JUNCTION ZONE Theoretical case

With reference to the jointing zone represented in Fig. 3, simulations concerning the shielding of section S2 (see also Fig. 4) have been performed. Two shielding configurations have been considered: one shielding cable and two shielding cables for every source cable. Simulations have been performed imposing three balanced current in the source conductors. The r.m.s. value used in the simulation is 1000 A. The result can be observed respectively in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 and compared with the power line magnetic flux density without the shield, Fig. 5.
Junction zone
S1 y z x S2 S3

Figure 1: HMCPL geometrical layout

x=0m

x=10m

x=20m

x=30m

Figure 3 Standard representation of a Junction zone

CIRED2009 Session 2

Paper No 0163

CIRED

20th International Conference on Electricity Distribution

Prague, 8-11 June 2009 Paper 0163

Section S1 and S3

Section S2

Simulation of a Junction zone in laboratory

In this section the measurement performed in laboratory are described. The simulation has been done by supply a two set of conductors. The former represents the source cable while the second is the shield. Two different configurations have been set up. The first one is represented in Fig. 8 and allow the simulation of the outside the influence of the joint, i. e. the shielding cables can follow perfectly the HV cable. The second configuration is represented in Fig. 9 where the distance between source and shielding cable is increased in order to represent the physical dimension of the joint.

i=50 cm d=11.8 cm (HV cable 1600 mm2)

Figure 4 Junction zone section

70 cm

4m

Figure 5 Magnetic flux density produced by the power line without shield Fig. 6 shows that the solution which employs one shielding conductors for each source cable allow to reduce the peak observed in Fig. 5 to the same value of the field generated from a trefoil configuration. Figure 8. Laboratory simulation of the shield outside the joint influence

Figure 6 - Magnetic flux density with shielding configuration with one conductor per phase In Fig. 7 the performance of the HMC passive loop with 2 shielding conductors for each source cable is shown. By using the split-phase technique the performance can be considerably increased. In fact, now the peak observed in Fig. 5 is completely disappeared. Moreover, the field over the junction zone is negligible with respect to the trefoil field as shown in Fig.6.

Figure 9. - Laboratory simulation of the shield close to the joint Even if the joint impose to the shielding cable a higher distance from the source cable the results of the measurements demonstrate how the decrease of the shield performance over the joint is negligible. For the sake of brevity here below are reported the numerical value of the measurements only relative to the configuration in Fig. 9. Table 1. Laboratory results: coupling coefficient Phase ISource [A] IShield [A] IShield/ ISource*100 1 547 524 96 2 552 538 97 3 550 525 95 Table 2. Laboratory results: magnetic flux density and shielding factor at 1 m from the power line plane 85 B Source [T] 8.4 B Shield [T] Shielding Factor 10

Figure 7 - Magnetic flux density with shielding configuration with two conductors per phase

CIRED2009 Session 2

Paper No 0163

CIRED

20th International Conference on Electricity Distribution

Prague, 8-11 June 2009 Paper 0163

Experimental application
In this section is presented will be described a junction zone of a high voltage buried cable line (three phase line, XLPE, 220 kV, 1400 A, Cu 1600 mm2) where the HMC passive loop has been just installed. Measurement concerning this application will be provided during the conference because at the time of delivery of this paper the power line was not working yet. In Fig. 10.A the shielding configuration is shown: 4 cables per shield phase have been employed. In Fig. 10.B the reader can observe the magnetic core in red color, the HV cable in black color and the shielding cables in gray color.
Cu 185 mm2 Insulation EPR PVC Jacket

(A) (B) Figure 10 Left: Shielding configuration: 4 cables per shield phase. Right: HV cable (black), shielding cable (gray) and magnetic core (red) Finally, in Fig. 11 the joints can be observed. This picture represents the zone simulated in laboratory with the system in Fig. 9.

Figure 11. Passage of the shielding cable close to the joint

CONCLUSION
In this paper a novel methodology for the mitigation of magnetic field produced by power line is presented. The technique is based on the concept of passive loop but in this case the shield currents are increased through a strong magnetic coupling with the sources, by a proper magnetic core, and the shield and source currents are naturally in phase opposition. For the described reason the name of the methodology is High Magnetic Coupling Passive Loop (HMCPL). The paper put in evidence the good performance that the HMCPL provide compared with other shield technology from the viewpoint of: shielding factor, installation cost and maintenance.

REFERENCES [1] Rashkes V., Lordan R., 1998, Magnetic field reduction methods: efficiency and cost, IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 552-559. [2] Wassef K, Varadan V.V., Varadan V.K., 1998, Magnetic field shielding concepts for power transmission lines, IEEE Trans. on Magnetics, vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 649-654. [3] Yaping Du, Cheng T C, Farag A S, 1996,Principles of power-frequency magnetic field shielding with flat sheets in a source of long conductors, IEEE Transactions on EMC, Vol.38, No.3, pp. 450-459. [4] A. Canova, A. Manzin, M. Tartaglia, 2002, Evaluation of Different Analytical and Semi-Analytical Methods for the Design of ELF Magnetic Field Shields, IEEE Trans. On Industry Applications, Vol. 38, No.3, pp. 788-796. [5] Cruz P, Izquierdo C., Burgos M., 2003, Optimum Passive Shields for Mitigation of Power Lines Magnetic Field, IEEE Trans on Power Delivery, Vol 18 No 4, pp. 1357-1362. [6] A. Canova, G. Gruosso, M. Repetto, 2004, Optimal shielding of low frequency fields, COMPEL, Vol. 23, No 1, pp. 173-86. [7] A. Canova, G. Gruosso, M. Repetto, 2003, Integral methods for the analysis and design of low frequency conductive shields, IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, Vol 39, pp. 2009 2017. [8] B. Shperling, L. Menemenlis-Hopkins, B. Fardanesh, B. Clairmont, D. Child, 1996, Reduction of magnetic fields from transmission lines using passive loops, Proc. Cigr - Paper 36-103. [9] K. Yamazaki, T. Kawamoto, H. Fujinami, 2000, Requirements for power line magnetic field mitigation using a passive loop conductor, IEEE Transactions on power delivery, Vol.15, No.2, pp. 646-651. [10] R.A. Walling, J.J. Paserba, C. W. Burns, 1993, Series-capacitor compensated shield scheme for enhanced mitigation of transmission line magnetic fields, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol.8, No.1, pp. 461469. [11] P. Cruz, C. Izquierdo, M. Burgos, L.F. Ferrer, F. Soto, C. Llanos, J.D. Pacheco, 2002, Magnetic field mitigation in power lines with passive and active loops, Proc. Cigr - Paper 36-107. [12] M. Reta-Hernndez, G. Karady, 1998, Attenuation of low frequency magnetic fields using active shielding, Electric Power System Research, No. 45, pp. 57-63. [13] A. Canova, L. Giaccone, Sistema di schermatura passiva di tipo magliato e conduttivo ad elevato accoppiamento magnetico, Patent n. TO2008A000176, February 2008.

Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank to Mr. Giuliano Bergamasco and Mr. Vincenzo Donofrio for their useful cooperation in the laboratory activity.

CIRED2009 Session 2

Paper No 0163