Staff of State Grid Hunan Electric Power Co., Ltd. conduct real-time examination and analysis of gas pressure, temperature and humidity inside cables.
BEIJING, March 25 (Xinhua) -- A buffer layer gas-filled high-voltage cable system developed by the electric power research institute affiliated to the State Grid Hunan Electric Power Co., Ltd. (State Grid Hunan Electric Power) in central China's Hunan Province was recently appraised as "world-leading" by a panel of experts including academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The system, jointly developed by the research institute, universities, and enterprises over five years, aims to address threats facing high-voltage cables such as floods, fires, and latent defects caused by extreme weather while cutting costs.
Featuring a globally pioneering gas-filled composite cable design, the facility creates an internal-external pressure difference by injecting mixed gases into a sealed buffer cavity. This enables waterproof performance at 10-meter underwater depths and improves flame resistance by 60 percent compared to conventional cables.
Additionally, the system slashes manufacturing costs, cutting expenses by half compared to submarine cables of the same length. Retrofitting traditional high-voltage lines with this facility requires only 8 percent of the original equipment investment per kilometer.
The facility has been operating smoothly on a 110-kilovolt line in Hunan's Changsha City since October last year. Through AI-empowered sensors deployed in the system, parameters such as internal air pressure, temperature and humidity of the cables are monitored in real time. Once risks such as cable overheating, moisture, latent defects, and damage caused by external force emerge, the big data system for high-voltage cables will receive warnings within five seconds and use AI analysis to make relevant processing, according to Liu Sanwei, a cable technology researcher at the State Grid Hunan Electric Power's electric power science research institute.
State Grid Hunan Electric Power stated plans to deploy the gas-filled high-voltage cable equipment in cities like Shanghai and Yueyang in the future to provide new technical support for the safe and reliable operation of urban power grids and enable a better life for people.
(Edited by Su Dan with Xinhua Silk Road, sudan@xinhua.org)
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