Study of electric field distribution and line characteristics of a syntactic foam insulated transmission line

The following paper analyzes the possibility of application of epoxy based syntactic foam as an insulator to replace SF₆ from Gas Insulated Transmission Lines (GIL). A small section of syntactic foam is modeled in Coulomb Software to study electric field distribution. For the simulation purpose, an epoxy resin matrix with forty percent concentration of glass microspheres is used. The electric field concentrates inside the microspheres due to comparatively smaller dielectric constant. The second part of the paper focuses on the calculation of line inductance, capacitance and resistance, at voltage level of 345 kV. The model with distributed parameters is used to study no-load as well as load characteristics of the transmission line. The no-load voltage at the receiving end increases by 8% and by 20% for the line lengths of 200 km and 300 km respectively. Also, power-voltage curves indicate that the maximum power transfer capacity of the line depends on the power consumed by the load as well as length of the line when only voltage stability conditions are under consideration.