Calculation of Power Line Fields Between Circular Conductors

Abstract

It is important to calculate the electric field at the surface of high voltage direct current power transmission lines, since it is this field which governs the onset of corona discharge and the power loss arising therefrom. A method is presented here to calculate the electric field based on an implementation of the boundary element method for conductors of strictly circular cross section. Given the circular geometry it is possible to resolve all integrals involved analytically. A Galerkin approach is adopted, giving the solution in the spatial frequency domain. That allows a controlled truncation of the system matrix by choice of which frequency components to keep. It transpires that the low frequency components are the most important ones. Two test cases are used to quantify the accuracy of the solution with respect to truncation and distance from the surface. It is found that the accuracy increases with distance from the surface, but for all distances can be controlled by choosing an appropriate level of truncation.