Arc Flash at Cable Termination

What portion of your equipment is original? Have transformers and capacity been added over the years?...and if so has the safety equipment been upgraded as well? Who is advising you? Do experienced electricians control the system or are they new?

It would help if you told us where the flashover occurs. Is the cable shielded? Has stress relief been used? Etc.......

Electric Arcs usually happen because of some sort of inductance. Assuming that your system is properly designed, you must have some sort of parasitic inductance.

Change all power cables by shielded power cables in the affected area.

If you cannot afford it, then wait for it to break. It will not last long.

I have doubts that this is in fact arcing in the traditional sense, as people know it here. I highly suspect tracking on the heatshrink tubing and possibly the stress cones to earth being too close a proximity to one another and possibly earth.

Where is the arcing occurring? Around the cores at the stress cone tops? At the crutch seal? Elsewhere? Is this singe core PILC or 3 cord PILC?

Is this a failure in the cables or solid dielectric insulation components, if so have you checked the failures are not due to Electrical Treeing?

Electrical_treeing

Just to save some confusion, PILC (Paper Insulated Lead Covered or Lead Cable), Oil or grease filled. Drained or mass impregnated, so there should be no treeing. Treeing normally occurs on solid dielectrics such as XLPE, PVC, EPDM (plastic type insulations and not craft paper types).

It was unclear to me if the failures were actually in the PILC cables or something else related to them nearby.

'at' to me could have implied some sort of solid dielectric termination kit or bushing could perhaps be the cause and not the cable itself.

Ok, I took it at the termination as he stated Raychem, which I also assume to be a heatshrink term. He needs to offer up detail or a photo.

1. When do arc flashes occur? When opening ABB breaker? When other breakers operate in 22 kV system? During Lightning storms? Or at other event....
2. Are the faults just on one phase?
3. Where is damage? In switchgear? In cable?
4. Who repaired damage? Same person each time?
5. What protection relays operate?
6. Any pictures of damage?

CR4 can only work on what you write.

I doubt we will hear any feedback on this. Dirty terms and insulation breakdown no doubt.

Please send us the photo at what point the arc flase occure. You have encounted numerous of arc flash at out going from ABB SACE HA2 GIS switch gear but does not specify at which location. It is at the VCB or at the termination kit?