Choosing the Cross-section of Cable Core for Wind

Power Electrical Collector Network taking into

account the economic factor
Viacheslav Bezruchko
dept. Electrical Engineering and
Information Measuring Technologies
Chernihiv Politechnic
National University
Chernihiv, Ukraine
slavajm@meta.ua
Andrii Krasnozhon
dept. Electrical Engineering and
Information Measuring Technologies
Chernihiv Politechnic
National University
Chernihiv, Ukraine
krasnozhon08@gmail.com
Vadim Bodunov
Roman Buinyi
dept. Electrical Engineering and
dept. Electrical Engineering and
Information Measuring Technologies
Information Measuring Technologies
Chernihiv Politechnic
Chernihiv Politechnic
National University
National University
Chernihiv, Ukraine
Chernihiv, Ukraine
vad1979@ukr.net
buinyiroman@gmail.com
Oleksandr Miroshnyk
dept. of Electricity Supply and Energy
Management
State Biotechnological University,
Kharkiv, Ukraine
omiroshnyk@khntusg.info

Abstract – Wind power plants with nominal power of 0.5-
5.5 MW, as a rule, are designed at voltages of 10-35 kV. In
addition to technical conditions and restrictions, a number of
economic criteria must be taken into account when designing
wind power electrical collector networks. For green energy
facilities, due to the high green tariff, the energy losses in the
electrical collector networks can significantly affect the
payback period. Therefore, during the design it is necessary to
choose such cross-sections of cable core that will ensure the
minimum cost for the entire period of building and operation
of the wind power plant. An analytical dependence is obtained,
which allows to calculate the economically justified current
density for the cores cross-section of such cables for a nominal
voltages of 10, 20 and 35 kV for different periods of maximum
generation of wind power plants. It is established that changes
in the payback period in the range of ±1 year from the
estimated cross-section of cable core will not change, because
the scale of cores cross-sections is discrete. The values of
economic current densities for different periods of maximum
generation are given in the article. They allow to choose
rational cross-section of cable core during the design of wind
power electrical collector networks.
Keywords – cable line, wind power plant, current density,
cross-section of cable core.
I. INTRODUCTION
For last five years, a large number of power plants using
renewable energy sources have appeared in the structure of
electric energy systems in the EU, USA, China, Ukraine and
other countries. This is due to the laws that encourage the
development of renewable energy sources to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. One of the most important ways
of this policy is establishment of Feed-in tariffs for
generating the green energy [1,2].
According to the global trend to reduce emissions, an
important task to be solved is to reduce the power and energy
losses, in particular through electrical collector networks of
solar and wind power stations. It should also be noted that
due to the high cost of "green" energy, energy losses in
transmission lines can be too expensive. Therefore, during
their design it is necessary to take into account both the cost
of equipment and the cost of energy losses, as noted in [3].
The electrical collector network consists of a large
number of inverter substations (for solar power stations) and
wind turbines (for wind power plants), which are connected
by 10-35 kV cable transmission lines. The cross-section of
cable core must be technically and economically justified.
Many works are devoted to the problem of choosing
rational cross-section of cable core. In particular, in [4-8]
various algorithms for optimizing the structure of cable lines
of wind power electrical collector networks are considered.
In [4] the objective function of the calculation algorithm
takes into account the energy losses in cable lines of the
power plant’s hi voltage grid, and the cable lines cost. In [5]
the authors suggested the integration method to design the
structure of wind power plant electrical collector network
and searching of cross-section of cable core. They propose to
use large cross-section of cable core to reduce the energy
losses caused by the impedance in the topology, thereby
resulting in a slight increased cable cost. In [6] the authors
applied a combination of heuristic algorithms mainly for
solving topological problems of the electrical collector
network. In [7] the authors applied an evolutive algorithm for
wind power plant optimal overall design. The algorithm
objective is to optimize the profits given an investment on a
wind power plant. The proposed method uses net present
value as a main criterion. In [8] a model for choosing of the
cross-sections of cable core within the wind power electrical
collector network is presented. The suggested economic
cross sections of the internal wind power plant cables
provide maximization of the profit generated by the wind
power plant within its lifetime through an optimization of the
balance between the investment and operating costs. The
work [9] is devoted to the problem of choosing the cross-
sections of cable screens in wind power plant networks.
However, none of the works fully takes into account the cost
of energy losses in the wind power electrical collector
networks.
II. THE PURPOSE OF THE ARTICLE
The purpose of this article is to offer a calculation of
economically justified current density for cross-section of

XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE

cable core selection for wind power electrical collector pa , pexpl – standard amortization and annual costs for
network at voltages 10-35 kV the operation of the cable relatively to WACC ;

III. HYPOTHESES OF RESEARCH C0 – electricity tariff;

The design of wind power plants is carried out in a series W – energy losses in the section of cable.
of phases: the selection of wind turbines, the formation of the
electrical collector network and others. This allows to use According to [12], pa  0.04 and pexpl  0.01 for 35 kV
optimization calculations at each individual stage.
cable and pexpl  0.018 for 10-20 kV cable.
To obtain the value of economically justified current
density for cables used a method that takes into account the The value of energy losses in the cable line section of
costs and benefits of the project [10]. The construction of length l can be obtained by the period of maximum energy
transmission lines is usually carried out in a period not losses [3]:
exceeding one year. Therefore the total equivalent annual
cost of electricity transmission will be determined by the

formula:  W  3  I max
2
  l    
Fcore
 TEAC  EAIC  EAOUC  En WACC  EAOUC  
I max – current flowing through the section of the cable
TEAC – total equivalent annual cost; with a cross-section Fcore in the mode of maximum loads;
EAIC –equivalent annual investment cost;  – resistivity of the cable core material;
EAOUC – equivalent annual operation and unreliability  – period of maximum energy losses, hours/year which
cost, which also include the cost of energy losses;
depends on the period of maximum load (generation) Tmax ,
En – normative efficiency ratio, which is the value hours/year:
inverse to the payback period PP , En  1/ PP ;
WACC – weighted average cost of capital.  Tmax 
2
    0.124    8760  
Value of WACC for cable per unit length can be  104 
obtained from the regression dependence:
From (1) - (4) you can get:
 WACC  a0  a1  Fcore  a2  Fscreen  
TEAC  ( En  pa  pexpl)  (a0  a1  Fcore 
a0 , a1, a2 – regression coefficients;   

 a2  Fscreen )  l  C0  3  I max
2
  l 
Fcore – cross-section of the cable core; Fcore

Fscreen – cross section of the cable screen. To obtain a cross-section Fcore for which the total
The following regression dependence for cables with equivalent annual cost TEAC will be minimal, it is necessary
aluminum cores on different voltage classes are given in [11] to find the first derivative of the variable Fcore and equate it
in thousands USD/km. In the equation below, the numerical to zero:
values of the coefficients are converted to obtain the result in
thousands Euro/km:
dTEAC
WACC10kV  8.32  0.06  Fcore  0.359  Fscreen ;  ( En  pa  pexpl)  a1  l 
 dFcore
   
WACC20kV  10.966  0.066  Fcore  0.351  Fscreen ; 1
  C0  3  I max
2
   l   2
0
WACC35kV  17.294  0.077  Fcore  0.469  Fscreen . Fcore

EAOUC value includes amortization deductions, operating From (7) you can get a cross section of cable core:

cost and the cost of energy losses:

C0  3  I max
2
  
 Fcore   
 EAOUC  EAOUC a  EAOUC expl  EAOUC losses    ( En  pa  pexpl)  a1

for which a minimum of total equivalent annual cost will

  pa WACC  pexpl WACC  C0  W   be provided, TEAC  min .
 Taking into account (5) and (8), the economically 0.6-2 MW, which use electrical collector networks at
justified current density for the cable core: voltages of 10 and 20 kV.

I max ( En  pa  pexpl)  a1
 j   2
 
Fcore  T 
C0  3     0.124  max4   8760
 10 

From (9) the values of economically justified current

density for wind power electrical collector networks can be
obtained, taking into account the current tariffs C0 for
electricity generated by such wind turbines. According to [2],
the value of the green tariff for electricity generated by wind
power plant depends on the nominal power of one wind
turbine (see Table I) and, in the future, will be slightly
reduced. Thus, wind power plants with the same installed
power can generate electricity with a few different tariffs.

TABLE I. THE VALUE OF THE GREEN TARIFF

The value of the green tariff for
electricity generated by wind power
Nominal power
plant, eurocents / kWh
of one wind Fig. 1. Dependences of economically justified current density of electrical
in the period
turbine, MW collector networks from the period of maximum generation
01.01.2022- 01.01.2023- 01.01.2025-
31.12.2022 31.12.2024 31.12.2029
0,6-2 5.82 5.71 5.28 Both Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 show that with the same period of
maximum generation with increasing value of the payback
more than 2 9.05 9.05 7.92
period in the construction of wind power plants, the value of
the economically justified current density can be reduced,
and the required cross-section of cable core is slightly
The voltage of the electrical collector networks depends
increased. This can be explained by the fact that investments
on the nominal power of a single wind turbine and their
in the construction of wind power plants, which include the
number in the group. As a rule, 10 kV voltage class is used
cable, with a decrease in the payback period should be
for wind turbines up to 0.8 MW, 20 kV for wind turbines
slightly less.
0.8-2 MW, and 35 kV for wind turbines over 2 MW.
According to the analysis of wind potential
measurements at several real wind power plants in Ukraine
and according to the documentation on wind turbines
(Nordex and GoldWind) it is established that the period of
the maximum generation of wind power plant is within
3200-3800 h/year.
Using the above, according to (9), the graphical
dependences j  f (Tmax) and j  f (PP) are obtained.
Green electricity tariff for powerful wind power plants,
which will operate from 2023 was used in this research.
Fig. 1 shows dependences of economically justified
current density for cable lines on the period of maximum
generation.
With increasing period of the maximum generation
economically justified current density should be reduced and
the cross-section of cable core increased, due to the need to
minimize the costs of energy losses in the cable for the entire
period of its operation.
Fig. 2 shows dependences of economically justified Fig. 2. Dependences of economically justified current density for cable
current density for cable lines on the period of maximum lines on the payback period
generation. During the same payback period with increasing
voltage class, the economically justified current density However, in most cases, changes in the payback period in
should be reduced, and the rational cross-section of cable the range of ± 1 year from the calculated cross-section of
core is increased. This is due to the lower value of the green cable core will not change, because the scale of cross-
tariff, which is applied to wind turbines with a capacity of sections is discrete.
 Given the above, the following economic current
densities may be recommended when selecting cross-section
of cable core (Table II).
TABLE II. THE ECONOMICALLY JUSTIFIED CURRENT DENSITY
j , A/mm2 for the period of maximum
Cable voltage,
kV generation Tmax , h/year
3200 3400 3600 3800
10 1.22 1.17 1.12 1.07
20 1.17 1.12 1.07 1.03
35 1.03 0.98 0.94 0.91
From (9) it is seen that the value of the economically
justified current density is a hyperbolic function of Tmax .
However, from Fig. 2 it can be seen that in the range of
periods of maximum generation 3200-3800 h/year, the
economically justified current density changes almost
linearly. Therefore, linear interpolation can be used to
determine the economically justified current density at
values Tmax other than those shown in Table II.
It should also be noted that for the design of wind power
plants electrical collector networks, which will be put into
operation after 2025, the economic current densities listed in
Table II should be increased by 4.0% for 10-20 kV and 6.9%
for 35 kV (caused by the reduction of the green tariff from
2025 year).
During the actual design of the wind power plants
electrical collector network, the rational cross-section of
cable core can be calculated by equation:
I max
 Fcore  ,
jtable
j table – economically justified current density, defined
by Table II.
The numerical value obtained by (10) must be rounded to
the nearest standard cross-section. After that the cross-
section must be checked for heating by the load current in
normal operation mode taking into account the conditions of
laying the cable and the method of its laying and for thermal
stability during short circuit modes.
The analysis of electrical collector networks of several
wind power stations operating in Ukraine showed that
economically justified cross-sections obtained according to
formula (10), in most cases exceed the minimum required
cross-sections according to the technical limitations of
normal and short circuit modes.
IV. CONCLUSION
An analytical dependence for the calculation of
economically justified current density for the cores of cables
of the wind power plants electrical collector networks for 10,
20 and 35 kV voltages is obtained.
Graphical dependences j  f (Tmax) and j  f (PP) are
obtained. "Green" electricity tariff for powerful wind power
plants, which will operate from 2023 was used in the
research. It is established that changes in the payback period
in the range of ± 1 year from the estimated cross-section of
cable core will not change, because the scale of cross-section
of cable cores is discrete. In the range of maximum
generation period 3200-3800 h/year, the economically
justified current density changes almost linearly.
Economically justified current density for wind power
plants electrical collector networks were calculated for
ranges of nominal voltages 10, 20 and 35 kV with a period of
maximum generation of 3200, 3400, 3600 and 3800 h/year,
which are typical for real wind power plants. The obtained
values are summarized in tables that can be used during the
implementation of real projects of the wind power plants
electrical collector networks.
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