Power Systems Technical Articles

Our experts continuously work on power systems problems, and we share solutions with Practical Reference Articles.

The main topics are earthing system modeling, power cable ratings, HV/LV electrical design, protective device coordination, and arc flash studies. We cover IEC and IEEE standards.

Join 23K+ engineers and get our latest technical articles direct to your inbox as they are releasedJayson Patrick

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Photo of Jayson Patrick for Technical Articles page about electrical power systems Design

Choose the article category

9 mins read
How cable crossings affect ampacity and current rating. Covers thermal hotspots, crossing angle, separation, and a practical HV case study.
4 mins read
The standard HV cable rating calculation methods do not cover all real-world situations. This article proposes a new method of finding the current rating for 10 cables touching in the air.
5 mins read
The methods for calculating the current rating of multiple cables installed in ventilated tunnels are explained with example calculations. Overall tunnel length and air velocity inside the tunnel have a significant impact on cable current ratings.
Prevent solar PV cable overheating with proper trench design. Learn how cable spacing, soil thermal resistivity, and backfill impact ampacity. Case study included.
2 mins read
How to model the influence of an additional substances like bentonite surrounding the conductors of a buried earthing system on grid resistance, touch and step voltages.
4 mins read
New 13 kV power circuits will be installed in an unfilled trough with ventilated covers. These new circuits will cross with existing buried 400 kV cables at approximately 90 degrees with a continuous current rating requirement of 1136 MVA (1640 A) per phase for all seasons.
This article explains why dynamic ratings are important when dealing with long AC cables for wind farms. An example calculation of a dynamic rating which uses the measured load profile is given.
This article shows the effects of soil resistivity and thickness of layers on grid resistance for earthing systems in multilayer soils. Increasing the resistivity of soil layers tends to increase the grid resistance, no matter which soil layer that is. Increasing the thickness of any soil layer with high resistivity also increases grid resistance and if the soil layer thickness is increased for a low resistivity layer then the grid resistance will decrease. Software modelling is performed and the results are compared and shown to match well with those from CDEGS software.
2 mins read
We have benchmarked our SafeGrid Earthing Software results for a 60 x 60 m grid against well-known software XGSLab™ and CDEGS™. We show that the results for grid resistance in multilayer soils up to 5 layers are virtually identical.
Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors