Dutch distribution cable: improvements in construction, reliability, environment and efficiency

In this paper the existing medium voltage cable grid in the Netherlands is shown. The perfect performance of these cables is responsible for the very short outage times in our country. Typical is the belted paper 12 kV cable with a very good performance since 1905. However, problems with this type of cable have occurred more frequently. With the arrival of the newly developed 12 kV three phase XLPE cable we can solve the paper cable problems. The main solution is using the XLPE cable for high and strongly changing loads. For the normal thin distribution cables the existing paper cable can be used for more than 40 years. The future development of cable systems will be in two ways: firstly by diagnostics like 0.1 Hz partial discharge measurements; and secondly by monitoring and by protection with integrated fibre optics in all types of power cables. With these developments we will come to ´total cable management´