Performance of water tight cables produced in Saudi Arabia under accelerated aging

This paper reports on the long term performance of water tight cables produced in Saudi Arabia subjected to accelerated aging. In this context, two types of water tight constructions were designed and implemented under the same production conditions. The first type was a completely water tight cable while the other was partially water tight. In addition, normal cross linked polyethylene (XLPE) insulated cables with medium density polyethylene (MDPE) and polyvinyle chloride (PVC) jackets were also included in this testing program. After an accelerated aging lasting more than 500 days, the retained dielectric strength and the water tree lengths were measured. The results show that the fully water tight cable outperforms the partially water tight cable followed by the normal XLPE cable. MDPE sheathed cable exhibited better performance than PVC sheathed one. The production cost of water tight construction was evaluated for different cable designs. The analysis shows that the water tight construction is economical and such cables should be preferred in areas where water treeing degradation is of concern.