More and more people worldwide are becoming “carbon conscious”. This means they are becoming increasingly aware of the imminent adverse effects of global warming. Of late there has been an urgent drive for governments to be on the forefront of all carbon mitigation initiatives. One such drive involves the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change whose parties have been meeting regularly under the banner of Conference of Parties (COP) since 1995. At this conference, parties to the convention review progress made in dealing with climate change. Also key to the deliberations in such meetings are better ways of developing cleaner “carbon free” energy sources. Energy sources of this nature are commonly known as renewable energy sources. In essence global energy trends are constantly moving towards development of more renewable energy sources. It is an undeniable fact that some of viable renewable energy sources especially those with bulk capacity are usually located remotely from load centers. This inevitable reality necessitates the construction of long distance bulk power transmission corridors to link generation sites with load centers. Due to its many inherent advantages over High Voltage Alternate Current (HVAC) for long distance power transmission, High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) is gradually winning the favor of many utilities. In fact, recent advances in HVDC technology have encouraged many utilities to explore the possibility of harnessing remotely located renewable energy sources which would have otherwise not been viable with HVAC transmission. Through the unfortunate and inevitable phenomenon known as corona effect, overhead HVDC conductors suffer real power losses to the air dielectric surrounding them. Through corona, part of the energy carried on the transmission line is expended through ionization and movement of charges in the air dielectric. This study combined physics, mathematical as well engineering concepts to review corona phenomenon around HVDC lines with specific emphasis on space charge generation and motion within ionized DC fields as well as the influence of temperature on corona discharge or power loss. Also, unlike HVAC, performance of an HVDC system relies heavily on the availability of a reliable and robust telecommunication system. One of the key ways of ensuring reliability of a telecommunication system is by making sure that reliable power supplies are in place to power remote repeater stations. A novel concept of quasi-autonomous corona-based power supply (or QC power supply in short) that works on the principle of magnetohydrodymic (MHD) power generation was developed. A small scale experiment was then designed to assess the feasibility of such power supplies. The experiment was conducted with DC supply of a maximum rated voltage of 30 kVDC and generated up to 6 VDC at an optimum ambient temperature of 23°C. These results have confirmed that with further development QC power supplies have the potential of proving reliable power to remotely located repeaters or any other small critical loads along the stretch of the HVDC transmission line. Practical HVDC transmission systems operate voltages in the excess of 500 kV. By linear extrapolation of the above mentioned results; one would expect to yield up to 100-, 120- and 160-VDC from a 500-, 600- and 800- kV HVDC system, respectively. Although the study succeeded in conceptualizing a CMHD idea upon which the novel QC power supply was developed, quite extensive and rigorous design, modeling, prototyping and experimentation processes are still required before the first QC power supply can be commissioned on a practical HVDC line
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufh/vital:11595 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Kaseke, R |
| Publisher | University of Fort Hare, Faculty of Science & Agriculture |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Doctoral, PhD (Physics) |
| Format | 166 leaves; 30 cm, pdf |
| Rights | University of Fort Hare |
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