Investigation on the Implementation of the Single-Sheath Bonding Method for Power Cables

Sheath bonding is an essential requirement for transmission and distribution cables. Three bonding methods are widely used in industry at present: solid bonding, single-point bonding, and cross bonding. The latter two are for solving the ampacity reduction problem caused by solid bonding. This paper presents an in-depth investigation of a new cable sheath bonding method called single-sheath bonding. The new method uses one of the cable sheaths as the return path for the fault current and thus eliminates the need for the ground continuity conductor (GCC). In this paper, various configurations to implement the single-sheath bonding method are proposed. Their performances are comprehensively evaluated and compared with those of the existing bonding methods through simulation and sensitivity studies. The results show that single-sheath bonding can achieve a similar performance of either single-point bonding or cross bonding with a lower cost. Therefore, single-sheath bonding can be an alternative to single-point bonding and cross bonding. The potential applications of the single-sheath bonding method are also clarified in the paper.