ANALYSIS OF MAGNETIC FIELD EFFECTS OF UNDERGROUND POWER CABLES ON HUMAN HEALTH

ANALYSIS OF MAGNETIC FIELD EFFECTS OF UNDERGROUND POWER CABLES ON HUMAN HEALTH

KOCATEPE, Celal
KUMRU, Celal F.
TASLAK, Eyup

Transmission and distribution lines of electrical energy are generally used to plant far from residential areas. But today, due to the growing population, the cities considerably expanded and electrical network have to lie within the living spaces. Especially, uses of medium voltage underground cables for distribution systems become widespread in such areas. The voltage levels of these cables are not too high and the electric field caused by the voltage is fairly shielded by the cable’s screen. However, by the reason of flowing load current through the cable’s conductor, low frequency magnetic fields occur around the cable. It is known that this magnetic field strength becomes greater with increasing current. Basically, shielding of low frequency magnetic fields is quite harder than shielding the electric fields. In case of being exposed to this kind of magnetic fields by people may lead to crucial health problems. Therefore, some limit values are introduced by the “International Commission On Non‐Ionizing Radiation Protection” (ICNIRP) and “The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers” (IEEE). For this reason, it has importance of measuring magnetic fields caused by high voltage cables (HVC) in urban areas and the required shielding measures should be taken if needed. In this study, magnetic field strengths at different points above a 12/20 kV, 150 mm2 (Al), single core HVC are measured for different current values. According to the results obtained, even at low currents, the magnetic field strength values could exceed the limiting values for certain distances. Keywords: Magnetic Field, Underground Power Cable, Human Health

Article
PeerReviewed

ISSN 978-9958-834-36-3

International Burch University

2014-05-15

2501