According to Europacable, the key to higher reliability is early cooperation between cable owner and supplier:
“HVDC cable systems are a mature and reliable technology. Failure rates are extremely low but today’s average downtime is still high. The cable industry is committed to further improve both reliability and availability because one fault is always too many. To tackle this issue, we call on all relevant stakeholders to address and consider both reliability and availability for the entire HVDC interconnector system from very initial planning stage. In this respect, cooperation between the HVDC interconnector owner and the cable supplier/s should be considered as a must to establish a viable long-term solution to ensure both reliable and available HVDC cable systems.”
The above is the Europacable core message conveyed by Mr. Bo Nilsson at the ENTSO-E Final Dissemination Workshop on HVDC Reliability in Brussels.
Europacable and ENTSO-E have established a fruitful cooperation over the last years which has resulted, among others, in a series of technical studies on cable technology. A joint paper suggesting recommendations on how to improve HVDC cable systems reliability will be published in June 2019.