Computation of the Electromagnetic Fields of Overhead Power Lines with Boundary Elements

This paper presents a numerical approach for computing the electromagnetic fields of overhead power lines by means of the boundary element method. It is based on boundary integral equation, which allows the unbounded problem to be entirely defined at its boundary, and therefore reduces the number of variables required to solve it. The proposed methodology can be used to find the potential gradients not only over the surface of the conductors, but also anywhere of interest in space. The paper also deals with analyzing the influence of grounding wires and the influence of different types of boundary elements on the field distributions. The boundary domain is discretized in both constant and linear elements, and comparisons against analytical results show accurate approximations for the field distributions, even for small computational domains and lower order elements. Besides, the grounding wires, generally disregarded, are shown to have an actual impact on the field distributions, and can be easily taken into account by using the proposed methodology.