Using Computational Fluid Dynamics to Assess Dynamic Line Rating in Southern Idaho
The overall goal of the study is to combine computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations with weather data that is collected over a 1-year long period across southern Idaho to calculate the dynamic line ratings (DLR) of several transmission lines. These ratings can be compared to the static rating assumptions to show the potential for additional current carrying capacity along transmission lines through account for additional effects of convective cooling from the wind. The region of interest is quite large, sized at 144 km by 98 km; in order to cover this large region, the CFD simulations are split into four separate regions of over 80 million computational cells each. The weather data that was collected suggest initial assumptions used to make the static ratings were vastly over predicted with regards to summer temperatures and solar irradiance. The weather data is ran through the General Line Ampacity State Solver (GLASS) tool that was developed by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to parse large quantities of weather data across thousands of transmission midpoint spans in the region. For shorter lines, the dynamic line ratings often show large improvement over static ratings. The case study here shows over 95% of the time DLR values are above static values on the short transmission lines. However, for long lines, a conundrum occurs, where due to the large number of weather stations associated with the line, there is often a single weather station which may read local wind speeds of zero. This often defaults the line rating to be limited by natural convective cooling and does not show as much improvement over static as might be expected from the weather data if DLR calculations are used with a minimum ampacity across all midpoints. Other methods with transient state calculations should be utilized for long lines.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US DOE Wind Energy Technology Office
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1498073
- Report Number(s):
- INL/CON-18-51823-Rev000
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: CIGRE Grid of the Future, Reston, VA, 10/28/2018 - 10/31/2018
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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