Study of Sheath Circulating Current and Loss-reducing

of 500kV Long-distance Submarine Cables

Zhaobin Du, Member, IEEE, Qing Xiao
and Yao Zhang

Jun Chen, Youqiang Qiu

and Jingcheng Liang

College of Electric Engineering

South China University of Technology
Guangzhou, China
epduzb@scut.edu.cn

EHV Power Transmission Company of CSG

Guangzhou, China

AbstractConsidering large charging capacitors and grounding

feature of 500kV long-distance single-core oil-filled submarine
cables, a new calculating method on circulation currents of
sheath is proposed based on electromagnetic field theory and
circuit laws. With the distributed parameter model of the wire
core, the influence of current distribution along core wire and
capacitance current on sheath circulation current is analyzed.
The cable sheath losses can also be calculated conveniently. The
results from on-site test demonstrate the feasibility and
effectiveness of the proposed method. Further by analyzing the
influence of the structural parameters and operating conditions
of submarine cables on cable loss, multi-point grounding of
sheath and reactive power flow optimization would be suggested
as two effective loss-reducing measures for such kind of projects.
Index Terms--loss-reducing measures; circulating current of
sheath; extra-high voltage submarine cable; sheaths bonded at
both ends

I.

INTRODUCTION

Submarine cable is the important supporter for the power

transmission of mainland-island interconnection projects.
Extra high voltage (EHV) submarine cable, which has large
space between phases and is of metal sheaths bonded and
grounded in both ends, needs a different operating
environment from the land-type cables [1, 2]. As the main
element of the interconnection project, the losses of submarine
cables affect the power transmission capacity of the project.
At present, the study of the losses of 500kV EHV submarine
cable(s) in our country is just in its infancy [3-5]. This paper
focuses on the engineering calculations for the sheath
circulating current of 500kV long-distance AC single-core oilfilled submarine cables and feasible measures to reduce
submarine cable losses. The effort has important significance
for improving the economic efficiency of submarine cable
interconnection projects.
The published materials about the calculation for EHV
submarine cable losses are not so many [3-7]. References [4,
5] use the modal transformation matrix of multi-conductor
system to deduce the general formula for analyzing the current
distribution of multilayer conductors (including inner

conductor, sheath, outer conductor and the armor) in the

single-core submarine cable system, and establish the model
of 500kV single-core oil-filled submarine cable system which
is applied to calculate the transmission capacity of 500kV
single-core single-layer iron-armored cable. Reference [8]
defines the calculating impedance of conductors in every layer
inside the cable and that of seawater around the cable,
employs two-port network model to calculate the current and
losses of conductors in every layer inside the cable, which was
applied for a 132kV AC submarine cable project. But the
above materials dont consider the influence of large charging
current of sheath and study the measures to reduce the
circulating current losses of sheath of EHV submarine cable.
References [6, 7] obtain the induced current of sheath with
core current and calculate the losses of sheath. References [9,
10] use a similar model to calculate the induced current of
sheath in unit length, considering the electromagnetic
induction between core and sheath for a phase and between
sheaths of different phases, and model the sheath-ground loop
which contains the parameters like equivalent depth of earth
[11], leakage resistance of ground and grounding resistance of
sheath. In rated conditions, core charging current for sheath is
large because of the thick wire core and high rated voltage of
EHV submarine cable. For example, the charging current of
the submarine cable in Hainan Interconnection Project reaches
22.8A/km [2]. Thus, the influence of the charging current on
the axial distribution of the core current cannot be ignored. In
such situation, if the model in references [9, 12] is directly
used to calculate the sheath induced current, the error would
be large. In addition, the charging current flows through the
submarine cable sheath and into the earth at the grounding
point, which affects the distribution of the sheath circulation
current in turn. So the influence of the charging current for the
axial distribution of the sheath circulation current should be
considered when calculating the losses of the sheath
circulation current.
This paper will consider the characteristics of 500kV longdistance submarine cable and build the model of the
distributed parameters of cable wire core and the multi-point
grounding circuit model of the sheath, then propose a new

978-1-4799-2522-3/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

method on calculating the sheath circulation current based on

the combination of electromagnetic field theory and circuit
laws. Finally by analyzing the effects of the multi-point
grounding structure of sheath and reactive power flow
regulation of cable, reasonable ways for loss-reducing are
discussed and suggested.
This paper is organized as follows: Section II shows the
analysis for the calculation of the core current distribution of
long-distance EHV submarine cable and the derivation for the
formula of the sheath circulation current; Section III, based on
on-site test data, the calculating results of the sheath
circulation current from the proposed method are checked and
the losses of submarine cable are analyzed; In section IV, two
feasible and practical solutions to reduce submarine cable
losses are discussed. In final section, some conclusions and
future work are included.
II.

METHODS

A. Analysis of the core current distribution of long-distance

EHV submarine cable
Because of the big capacitance, a lumped-parameter model
is inappropriate to analyze the losses of long-distance EHV
submarine cable (like 10 km). The reasons are the obtained
impedance or admittance parameters based on the simplified
formula of lumped-parameter model would have large errors
and it is hard to get the equivalent uniform current of core for
loss calculating considering long-distance cable and this
model cannot correctly reflect the cross-chain relationship
between the core current magnetic field and the sheath as well,
which makes it hard to accurately obtain the sheath circulation
current and its losses.
Thus, multiple--model cascade connection is applied here
to express the submarine cable core model [13]. After the
testing, the number of model is about 10 for a 30 km EHV
cable, which assuring very high accuracy.
0.45

80

Phase

Altitude of current (kA)

40
0.3
20
0.25
0
0.2
-20
0.15
-40
0.1

-60

0.05

Phase of current ()

60

0.35

-80

Receiving end

10

15

20

Length of cable (km)

25

30

B. Calculation of circulating current

a. Calculation of the induced emf (emf) of the core and selfinduced emf of the sheath
Since the amplitude of the core current along long-distance
submarine cable is not constant, the existing formulas cannot
be directly applied to calculate the induced emf of the core to
the sheath circuit loop among phases. According to the
assumptions of the distributed parameter model of the wire
core, the amplitude of the core current in each model
segment can be seen to be constant with enough segments. A
scheme to calculate the induced emf is proposed as follows: (1)
the flux of the core current for each model segment is firstly
calculated; (2) then the superposition of flux is conducted to
calculate the induced emf of the whole sheath loop.
The expression of the cross-linked flux between core
current of phase A and the sheath circuit loop of phase A and
phase B is as follows:

-100

Sending end

Figure 1. Current amplitude and phase along the 31km submarine cable.
Nearly no-MW load with the receiving end paremeters: U=542.93-j0.33 kV,
P=0.827MW,Q=413.63Mvar.

Due to the capacitance current, the amplitude of core

current along the long cable shows a V shape in the
distribution model, seen in Figure 1. At the point 20 km from

(1)

where n is the number of model, A is the cross-linked

flux between core current of phase A in the k-th segment and
the sheath loop of phases A and B. For the sheath loop of
phases A and B, the emfs induced from the core currents of
phases A, B and C respectively are as (2):

100

Altitude
0.4

the power receiving end of the cable, the core current

amplitude is close to zero. In this case of nearly no MW flow,
the core current along the cable can be thought to have only
reactive component. Thus, with capacitance current along the
cable, the amplitude of core current keeps changing from one
end to the other, while the phase varies little from one end to a
certain point along the cable. In that specific point, the
amplitude of the core current has a minimum value, and the
phase reverses from -90to 90. It should be noted that the
submarine cable sends reactive power from the point to both
ends.

A
B
C

d
d
d

dt
dt
dt

j
j
j

(2)

For any sheath loop, apart from the emf induced from the
core currents Ia, Ib and Ic, there is also self-induced emf
induced from the sheath currents Is of cables. However, the
sheath currents Isa, Isb and Isc are unknown currently and to be
determined next.
Suppose the flux of the three-phase sheath currents Isa, Isb
and Isc to the sheath loop of phase A and phase B is
,
and
respectively, and
is defined as

the inductance of phase A sheath to the sheath loop of phases

A and B:
I

(3)

If the 3 cables are set at the same level and the spaces
between the left cable and the middle one are supposed to be
equal to that between the right cable and the middle one for
simplification. The calculating inductances are defined as
M
M
M
and M
M
. The inductance of

sheath currents of phases A, B and C respective to the phase C

sheath-ground loop [9] are as (4):

(4)

Then the emfs induced from the phases A, B and C

sheath current on the corresponding sheath loop of phases A
and B are as (5):

For the sheath-armor parallel structure, the capacitance

current between the cable core and sheath flows through the
sheath branch and flows into the earth at the sheath grounding
point. Therefore, for the sheath branch, the induced currents Is
are superimposed with the capacitance current from the wire
core. The distribution of the capacitance current is as shown in
Figure 3, with n model segments.

(5)

b. Calculation of induced currents of sheath

Figure 3. Distribution of capacitance current between wire core and sheath.

Each of the capacitance current icc1 ~ icc(n +1) is considered

as a current source. If the part of each capacitance current
flowing into the sheath branch is separately calculated, by
superimposing all capacitance currents on the corresponding
sheath of each model segment, the total capacitance currents
of sheath segments can be obtained.

Figure 2. Equivalent circuit diagram of submarine cable sheathes.

Figure 2 shows the three independent circuits, which are

used in the branch current method for solving the equivalent
circuit. In the circuits, the counterclockwise direction is set as
the positive direction. Based on the Kirchhoff's first law, the
equations on the sheath circuit loops of the phases A and B,
the phases B and C, and the circuit looped by phase Cs sheath
and the ground, are set as (6):
0
0

It is easy to calculate the heat loss of submarine cable

sheath and armor according to the currents flowing through
each part of the conductor [14]. Main Losses of submarine
cable outer layers consist of the circulation current loss of the
sheath and the armor, the dielectric loss and eddy current loss
of insulating medium, wherein the eddy current loss is
relatively small and is negligible when both ends of the
sheaths of 3-phase are in direct grounding.
For long-distance EHV submarine cable, in order to
suppress the over-voltage, it usually makes the sheath multipoint grounding in the middle parts of the submarine cable. A
schematic with m grounding segments is shown in Figure 4.
The loss of each submarine cable segments can be calculated
by the method proposed above.

(6)

0
where R is the sheath resistance, and R the total resistance
to earth, R
R
R
R , R and R are the resistance to
earth of two grounding points, and R the equivalent
resistance of earth. With the equations above, the unknown
induced currents of sheath Isa, Isb and Isc can be calculated. If
the outer layer of the submarine cable contains the metal
sheath and metal armor, and they are bonded at the end, then
the current of sheath calculated above is distributed in the two
metal conductive layers. The induced current in the sheath
/
branch of the sheath-armor parallel layer is
/
, where Rsd is the
and the armor branch
resistance of armor, Rsr is the resistance of sheath, and
is
sheath-armor parallel resistance.
c.

Calculation of capacitance current between wire core

and sheath

Figure 4. The schematic diagram for multi-point grounding in the middle

of the submarine cable sheath.

III.

IV.

EXAMPLES

A. Checks of the circulating currents of sheath

The real case is Hainan Interconnection Project of CSG, in
which the submarine cable is about 31km long with the lead
sheath and the copper armor layers bonded and grounded in
every nearly 8 km, namely the submarine cable sheath is
divided into four independent segments.
Under different conditions of the cables (voltages U, active
power P and reactive power Q of power receiving end), the
calculating sheath currents of the four segments of the
submarine cable are listed in Table , which show only the
sheath-armor currents Is of near-grounded-part of each
segment forward the receiving end. The sixth column is the
measured values from on-site tests.
In Table I, the maximum error 11.44% is found. The errors
may be caused by: (1) the inaccuracy of the environmental
parameters of the cables such as grounding resistance, earth
resistance, capacitance of cable to earth; (2) irregular
arrangement of three-phase cables under the sea and the
landing parts; (3) the assumption of the core distribution
model and the ignorance of mutual influence of the grounding
loops of sheaths; (4) the instrument of current measurement.
TABLE . COMPARISON OF CALCULATED AND MEASURED VALUES OF THE

A. Influence of sheath grounding structure on the losses of

submarine cables
If the cable is adequately long, the phase of the wire core
current corresponding to a sheath loop may reverse as
described in part A of Section II, and the total magnetic fluxes
generated by different wire core portions of the same cable
will be cut down partially. In other words, if there are more
grounding structure along a long-distance cable, the magnetic
flux offsetting effect each sheath loop may has will be
weakened, and the sheath induced current increases generally.
First, when ignoring the sheath capacitance current, the
distribution of the induced current in different sheath structure
of the same cable is as shown in Figure 5.The circulating
current of sheath is the smallest in the case of that the
submarine cable sheath is undivided, i.e. no grounding
structure in the middle part of cable. However, due to the
capacitance current on sheath, the distribution of the
circulating current of sheath changes greatly for the same
sheath structure. The capacitance current likely makes the
sheath current amplitude increase and phase angle reverse.
With more grounding branches, the capacitor current
component flowing through the sheath is reduced, which
shows opposite behavior to the induced current of sheath.

CIRCULATING CURRENTS OF SHEATHES

1st
segmen
t

Case 1

2nd
segmen
t

3rd
segmen
t

4th
segmen
t

0.35

4th
segmen
t
(measu
red
values)

Relati
ve
error
of 4th
segmen
t

U=530.53kV, P=0MW, Q=114.91MVar

ISA

0.2436

0.1082

0.2895

0.4692

0.4270

9.88%

ISB

0.2467

0.1085

0.2907

0.4725

0.4359

8.40%

ISC

0.2458

0.1084

0.2903

0.4711

0.4299

9.58%

Case 2

Induced current in sheath (kA)

IS
(kA)

ISA

0.2565

0.0964

0.2780

0.4580

0.411

11.44%

ISB

0.2595

0.0961

0.2791

0.4613

0.4178

10.41%

ISC

0.2586

0.0960

0.2787

0.4599

0.4130

11.36%

B. Analysis of the losses of submarine cable

When the submarine cables of Hainan Interconnection
Project is under the condition of nearly no-load, the losses
calculated according to Case 1 are listed in Table I.
TABLE II. LOSSES ANALYSIS OF SUBMARINE CABLES CLOSE TO NO-LOAD
Total
loss
2.0895

Circulating
current loss
of sheath
0.1004

Wire core
loss

Dielectric
loss

0.1242

1.8650

undivided
2-segment
3-segment
4-segment

0.3

0.25

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

10

15

20

25

30

35

Length of cable (km)

Receiving end

U=531.71kV , P=-5.48MW, Q=103.95MVar

(MW)

ANALYSIS OF LOSS-REDUCING

Sending end

Figure 5. Distribution of induced current in the sheaths.

Different numbers of sheath segment of a cable with the receiving end
paremeters: U=543-j0.3 kV, P=0.827 MW,Q=413.626 MVar.

For the EHV cable with sheath-armor parallel structure,

when the number of grounding branches of sheath-armor
increases, the circulation current amplitude of the parallel
circuit would be constant. Wherein the sheath branch current
decline, and while the amplitude of armor layer branch current
rises with the number of segments increased. According to the
condition shown in Figure 5, the influence of sheath
grounding structure on the submarine cable loss is shown in
Table 4-1.
TABLE III. LOSSES WITH DIFFERENT SEGMENT STRUCTURES
(MW)

undivid
ed

2segment

3segment

4segment

5segment

6segment

Sheath
loss

0.3913

0.1523

0.1080

0.0925

0.0854

0.0815

Total
loss

2.4323

2.1933

2.1490

2.1335

2.1264

2.1225

V.
The Table IV shows that the submarine cable loss
increases as the number of segments decreases, but if the
number of segments is more than four, the loss-reducing effect
is not obvious. Wherein, the core loss and dielectric loss have
nothing to do with the grounding structure.
B. Influence of Var transmission and voltage level on loss
When active power of the submarine cable is set in the
reasonable range, for different voltage levels, loss rates of
EHV cable have similar profiles with various reactive power
transmission patterns, which are a set of salient concave-down
curves and shown in Figure 6. From the testing, some facts
could be found as follows:

With the distribution parameter model of long-distance

EHV submarine cable core and the grounding structure of
sheath, a new method for calculating the current of sheath and
the losses of submarine cable is proposed in this paper. The
real example from Hainan 500kV submarine cable
interconnection project demonstrates the feasibility and
effectiveness of the method proposed. This paper also finds
that suitable multi-point grounding structure of submarine
cable sheath and optimizing reactive power flow and voltage
level of the cable could improve the loss of long-distance
EHV submarine cable. Future studies will focus on the
influence of loss-reducing measures on submarine cable
operating safety.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

2.2

2.1
Percent of loss (%)

The authors gratefully acknowledge the supports of the

Student Research Project (SRP) of South China University of
Technology and EHV Power Transmission Company of CSG.

520kV
525kV
530kV
535kV
540kV

2.15

2.05

REFERENCES
[1]

1.95

[2]
1.9

1.85
150

CONCLUSIONS

[3]
200

250
300
350
400
450
Ouput of reactive power from receiving end (MVar)

500

[4]

Figure 6. Reactive power-loss rate curve under different voltage levels

with 106.63MW.

(1)There is an optimal reactive power transmission

interval, in which the loss rate of the EHV submarine cable is
the lowest with a deviation for different voltages.
(2) In light load, the higher the voltage level is, the more
the loss is, and for heavy load, like above 4/5 rated capacity,
the situation is contrary. The main reason is that dielectric loss
increases as the voltage enhances and plays an important role
in light-load scenarios.
Based on the above analysis, if the following two measures
would be reasonably and flexibly employed, a certain loss
reduction effect on long-distance EHV submarine cable could
be attained.
(1)Appropriately increase sheath grounding branches in
the middle of long EHV submarine cable, which can reduce
the losses of sheath circulating current.
(2)By optimizing the reactive power flowing through
submarine cable and voltage level, the lowest loss can be
reached.

[5]

[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
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