Abstract
After the cable is installed, many geometric factors, such as bowing types of the cable and the length difference of the cable between each minor section will cause the impedance unbalance between cables. The impedance unbalance will increase or decrease the sheath circulating currents, which are critical to human safety and sustaining the capabilities of electric power. Accordingly, in this paper, a new method is also proposed to reduce the sheath circulating currents and an reduction equipment according to the theory of the new method is developed. The reduction equipment is tested when the cable is on service. The test results show that it can reduce the sheath circulating currents by up to 97.8[%]. This confirms the validation of the new method and the reduction equipment, and assures the safe operation of the transmission cables. In order to illustrate the safe operation of the cable with new current reduction equipment at transient state due to lightning and single line-to-ground fault, extensive simulations have been made. Then the protection scheme of sheath circulating currents reduction equipment is proposed by adopting the new device of RDP(Reduction Device Protector).