Cooling of oil-filled cable joints using heat pipes

The paper describes a method to decrease the maximum temperature of a high-voltage cable joint by transporting heat from the joint to the adjacent cable, using heat pipes. The calculated decrease of the temperature peak in the joint is about 30%. This corresponds, however, with an increase in the permissible current rating of only 5%, which is in good agreement with the measured values. The experimental results were obtained using a simplified thermal model of a joint. Further increase in the current rating may be obtained by enlarging the diameter of the oil channel in the hollow conductor.