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Overhead Lines and Weather

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Overhead Lines

Part of the book series: CIGRE Green Books ((CIGREGB))

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Abstract

Electric overhead lines are built and run through any type of terrain, from the maritime coast to the continental inland, from sea level to high mountains, and also in some of the most challenging climate zones of the world from rain forests to deserts, from tropical zones to the arctic. They are exposed to a wide variety of weather impacts like bush fires, extreme heat, sandstorms, typhoons, tornadoes, lightning, extratropical weather systems, sprays of sea salt, freezing rain, rime icing, wet snow, floods, etc. It is therefore of critical significance that such lines are designed in a secure manner to be prepared for any type of weather event and impact which otherwise could disrupt their reliable operation and cut off the expected supply of electric power to the society at its delivery point. On the other hand, it is likewise important that such lines are not built stronger and more expensively than they need to be, in order not to overinvest in more security than needed and also to avoid structures that are much heavier and visually more predominant than the public can or will accept.

Originally published by Cigré, 2014, under the ISBN 978-2-85873-284-5. Republished by Springer International Publishing Switzerland with kind permission.

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Acknowledgements

The completion of this chapter was first of all made possible only by the support of all good Cigré colleagues of especially the Working groups B2.16 and B2.28 with whom I enjoyed an enthusiastic and fruitful collaboration with during many years. It would take too much space to mention them all. However, I am most grateful to Dr Henry Hawes, Australia, for his work on high intensity winds (Cigré TB 256 and Cigré TB 350), Dr André Leblond, Canada, for his efforts to complete the Icing Brochure (Cigré TB 291), as well as the Secretary of both WGs, Dr J. Brian Wareing, UK. I would also like to thank my good friend and icing colleague, Professor Masoud Farzaneh of UCAQ, Canada, for his great contributions to the mechanical and electrical aspects on atmospheric icing, both on conductors and in insulation systems. Dr Sergey Chereshnyuk is much appreciated for providing information on the vast research on icing climate in Russia over many years, to our community. I am indeed also indebted to my Norwegian colleagues: Dr Knut Harstveit for his fundamental work on turbulence formation behind steep hills, and to Dr Bjørn Egil Kringlebotn Nygaard for taking the science of atmospheric icing a huge step forward by improving the wet snow accretion model and implementing icing processes into regular weather forecasting models. Finally, I would as well like to thank Dr Dave Havard and Dr Normand Bell for their valuable review of this chapter.

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  1. Lørenskog, Oslo, Norway

    Svein Fikke

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  1. Svein Fikke
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Correspondence to Svein Fikke .

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  1. Malters, Switzerland

    Konstantin O. Papailiou

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Fikke, S. (2017). Overhead Lines and Weather. In: Papailiou, K. (eds) Overhead Lines. CIGRE Green Books. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31747-2_7

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