Uprating of transmission lines by means of HTLS conductors for a sustainable growth: challenges, opportunities, and research needs

This paper provides a comprehensive and critical review and evaluation of the technological state-of-the-art of high-temperature low-sag (HTLS) conductors by analyzing research articles, theses, reports, white papers and international standards. The growth of power demand requires new solutions to develop power transmission systems, while facing the issues related to power systems congestion. A possibility to solve the load growth issue is to increase the capacity of existing transmission systems by reconductoring the lines with new conductors, which are able to operate at higher temperatures, while limiting the sag and maintaining or reducing the required clearances, thus having more current carrying capacity than the existing ones. This paper also describes the limitations of such technology and identifies the research needs to fulfill the requirements of the industry and transmission system operators.
This work was supported in part by the Generalitat de Catalunya under Project 2017 SGR 967 and in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Project RTC-2017-6297-3.
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