Highly efficient overhead line innovative conductors with reduced joule power losses

The continuously growing electrical power demand is more and more faced by the increase of generation from renewable energy sources. Given the uneven distribution of those resources in the power system, an increase in the transmission lines current rating (also called ampacity) is expected in the next future, to avoid the formation of bottlenecks. Given the difficulties in building new lines, due to authorization and compliance with environmental and public acceptance concerns, the development of new technologies for conductors is desirable to face the double problem of increasing the ampacity and efficiency of the present lines. In this paper, starting from a state-of-the-art panoramic about the presently adopted conductors for power lines, a discussion about the currently proposed solutions for High Temperature Low Sag conductors is given. The scope is to investigate the possible issues related to an increased exploitation of the power lines, along with the expected improvement in efficiency deriving from the employment of new conductor designs.