Calculation Model of Ice Melting Joule Heat for Overhead Lines

Severe icing on overhead lines will make towers load too much to be damaged, which affects the safe operation of transmission lines. One of the most effective ways is to use the joule heat generated by electric current to carry out ice removal. Taking ice covered overhead lines as a research object, a mathematical model of joule heat was established based on the heat balance equation and a computational program was written. Comparison of the experimental results of icing wind tunnel test in University of Quebec in Canada and the computational results validated the model. The joule heat under different current intensities and impacts of atmospheric temperature, air velocity, liquid water content and mean volume diameter of supercooled water droplet under a certain current intensity were analyzed. The results show that the joule heat will be consumed a lot if the current intensity is relatively low, thus higher ice melting current intensity contributes to saving more electrical energy. Atmospheric temperature and air velocity influence the ice melting time most among the conventional meteorological parameters.