Outages Investigation and Characterization of Saudi Electrical Cables using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

Saudi electric Company (SEC), and Petrochemical industries in Saudi Arabia and other plants provide the utilizing location and testing, and also some of the raw insulation materials for cable industries. Major petrochemical producers are striving to improve the quality of the plastic raw materials. On the other hand, cable industry has also made noticeable progress in the production of distribution voltage level cables; however, many factors are not accounted in the choice of the cable materials. These factors include the quality assurance in manufacturing processes, quality of materials used, weather, and soil environment of the kingdom, and other factors. Underground cables utilizing utility and industries are concerned about the overload and ampacity selected and temperature is, in general, the prevailing stresses producing insulation aging. Also concerned about water penetration of insulated electrical devices and especially plastic insulated multi-conductor cables which can seriously effect the electrical properties of such devices/or conductors. The problem of water penetration is amplified when the electrical cable is positioned underground or in a high humidity environment. This paper presents investigates outages records available to determine some conclusions and what causes such outages. A selection of faulted cables samples, new manufactured are tested by the application of laser based technique. The quality of such cables samples was based on measurement to trace metals present in cables responsible for absorption of water and water tree formation.