AA 54:1998

$12.35

The Evaluation of Losses in Conductors

Published By	Publication Date	Number of Pages
AA	1998	15

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Category: AA

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Description

The high costs of energy and generation facilities have made it extremely important to evaluate power losses when selecting conductors. Construction costs and energy costs have increased dramatically during the past decade and this trend may well continue.
This publication provides a simple method for evaluating the power losses in transmission and distribution conductors. It is intended to serve as a guide to aid in the selection of conductors which will be the most economical over their design life.
No attempt is made in the method described here to develop the optimum conductor from the standpoint of total system design. Factors such as structure sitting, structure loading, ground clearance, etc. are not taken into account in this evaluations.
Very significant savings can be realized in both transmission and distribution by evaluating the conductor choice on every line which is to be built or reconductored. Often the selection of a conductor with lower resistance will prove to be the most economical choice even though its first cost may be higher. The lower resistance may, of course, be achieved in several ways. The use of a large size conductor, a higher conductivity aluminum or, for ACSR constructions, an aluminum-clad steel core all contribute to lower resistance and result in lower power losses.
In determining the economics in conductor selection, there are three primary factors to be considered. They are: conductor investment cost; energy cost; and demand or capacity costs. For convenience, these are usually calculated on an annual basis.
It is necessary to take into account, therefore, not only the annual cost of providing the conductor, but also the annual cost of energy to generate the I²R losses in the conductor and the additional system capacity to provide those losses.
This publication has four additional sections: Section II describes the method for evaluating and comparing the total annual conductor costs and it lists several assumed factors. Section III presents an example of evaluating alternative transmission conductors. Section IV presents similar examples but for distribution conductors. Section V is an appendix which provides background on the development of equations in Section II.

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