Ironbridge — 132 kV Cable Sizing
132 kV cable rating over legacy 1960s fluid-filled circuits
The challenge
A new road was to be constructed directly over a set of NGET legacy 1960s fluid-filled cables connecting the SGTs to the local NGED 132 kV substation. Additional ground cover changes the thermal environment of a buried cable, and on ageing fluid-filled circuits any loss of rating has to be understood before construction is allowed to proceed.
What Aurora did
We developed a detailed 132 kV cable sizing calculation, first building a baseline model of the original fluid-filled cables to reproduce their existing rating, then running a series of optioneering studies to assess the impact of different road cover depths and backfill materials on the achievable circuit rating. The output gave a defensible basis for the road installation without derating the legacy circuits.