PROFITABILITY OF UNDERGROUND CABLING IN THE FINNISH RURAL ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION IN THE FUTURE

Tightening supply security requirements have induced a situation where a significant amount of the present overhead lines should be replaced by underground cables. This means a significant change in the annual amount of investments in both underground cabling and overhead lines. Thus, in principled way the amount of underground cable investments increases and amount of overhead line investments decreases. Former experiences of rural area cabling are minor, and thus the cabling process is not optimized that can be observed in the costs. Hence, there can be possibilities to cut the installation price of cabling. This paper presents a comparison of network renovation with future investment prices in medium-voltag e (10 kV or 20 kV) network in rural area conditions for underground cable and overhead line network. The study also takes into account operational and customer interruption costs peculiar to considered network types.