Design of Overhead Electrical Lines for Evacuation of Wind Farm
Software used: Power Path Pro, and AutoCAD Electrical
Field of use: Designing a new electrical line.
‘’In Solute, we give services to all types of promotors and operators to for installation of new wind farm. In this scope, in one of our projects, we were responsible for designing of several evacuation lines for 5 wind farms. These lines were all overhead with different levels of voltage (e.g., 132kV, 220kV, 400kV, etc.), so the Power Path Pro was the main software to design this project. Different type of tower (both single and double circuit) has been designed and employed in Power Path Pro to be considered for calculating all the details of the overhead lines.
The main challenge in this kind of project, is to estimate the span length to see if the designed line is in line with the national and international standards in terms of minimum distances.
In my idea, one of the best features of the Power Path Pro, is to calculate automatically the span length and give a longitudinal profile of the line, so the engineers can have an overview of the height of the tower, span length, minimum distance between the conductor and the ground, in order to optimize the design.
Another fantastic aspect of Power Path Pro, is the automatic download of calculation report, while the engineers design the electrical line, Power Path Pro make the calculation part very easy for the engineers to simply download it and adapt them.
Previously we were using AutoCAD electrical for such project, and we were forced to do all the calculations. As Power Path Pro is based on AutoCAD environment, it would be easy for an engineer to learn the software very fast with a basic knowledge of AutoCAD.
As a conclusion, Power Path Pro is an advanced and user-friendly tool for electrical line design. Automatic calculation report feature is a key point of this software, making the engineer’s work much more rapid. Additionally, automatic generation of longitudinal profile facilitates the optimization of the electrical line design.’’
Omid Abrishambaf
PhD in Computer science application in power systems, Electrical Project Manager at SOLUTE
About SOLUTE company
Since its foundation, SOLUTE has been closely bound to wind energy, sharing the success of the big companies and taking part in the second revolution of the wind energy industry at a national scale.
The constant growth of the industry has increased the demand of services, and that is why new developments that require the newest technology exist, as well as older assets which need operational support.
SOLUTE participates in that evolution, providing a solid experience in relation to the evaluation of the existing problems and offering a comprehensive solution based on engineering services within the industry.
This solution offered by SOLUTE encompasses all the life-time stages of a wind energy project: from the energy potential analysis of a location for a possible wind farm, to service errors reports or life extension projects, also including the complete design process of a wind farm, aeroelastic loads analysis, controllers design and fatigue tests, among others.
SOLUTE has been an active part in the wind energy generational change, through its participation in several lifetime extension projects for wind energy plants located in Spain, as well as the development of the latter wind turbine models by its R&D area, and also covering all the concepts of electrical engineering.
SOLUTE offers complete plant design engineering services, providing its experience in project management, coordination and analysis with different ranges, that allows the company to take charge of any stage or task within them.
