Empiric approach to a condition-oriented maintenance and investment strategy for MV cable networks

The method and efficiency of an investment strategy is strongly dependent on the amount and accuracy of the knowledge about the actual condition of the network system. Therefore the assessment of the aging status of the network equipment and namely its rest-life time has become an important task in the last decades. In order to assume the time to the next failure an artificial ageing system for the accelerated ageing of MV cables has been realized. It is developed to model the natural ageing process of MV cables samples as close as possible to realistic conditions. Finally, under controlled electrical and environmental ageing conditions a unique data base will be set up, which can be used to estimate the most probable time to the next failure of cable systems tested in field diagnostics, based on the partial discharge (PD) and tan(delta) values delivered from the field measurements. The described ageing system will enable further researches and developments in the direction of a condition oriented maintenance strategy for MV cable networks.