Effect of annealing on conductivity in XLPE mid-voltage cable insulation

A new study of the electrical conductivity of crosslinked polyethylene (XLPE) mid-voltage (MV) cable insulation is presented. Its main objective is to show the effect of annealing treatments on MV cables under actual service conditions. Complementary time domain (absorption/resorption currents) and frequency domain (dynamic electrical analysis) techniques are applied on different laboratory samples containing XLPE insulations: sections of XLPE insulated cable (with and without semiconducting screens) in the case of absorption/resorption currents and, in the case of dynamic electrical analysis, a thin ribbon obtained from the cable insulation by mechanical procedures. For annealing temperatures below a certain critical temperature, conductivity decreases both for XLPE cylinders (cable sections from which inner and outer semiconducting screens have been removed) and for real cables (sections of cable with semiconducting screens) but its value is smaller in the case of cables. If the annealing temperature is higher than the critical temperature, the behaviour of conductivity is more complex. In XLPE, cylinders conductivity initially decreases with the annealing time but after some annealing time it begins to increase, it passes over a maximum and eventually it decreases monotonically. In the case of real cable sections, conductivity grows, tending to a saturation value, which is noticeably higher than the corresponding value of the maximum obtained for XLPE cylinders. The experimental results are explained satisfactorily by means of the Mott equation that takes into account hopping conduction assisted both by temperature and electric field