Methodology for Minimizing Electric Field at Ground Level from Transmission Lines Using Sensitivity Analysis

Abstract In this paper, a new methodology is applied to optimize the geometry of conductors of overhead transmission lines (TL) with high precision and low computational cost. This methodology is based on the sensitivity analysis of the electrical charge of the transmission lines using the adjoint method. This information is used with the gradient method and the golden section algorithm to minimize the electric field at the ground level of three-phase TL with two cables per phase. The approximation using central finite differences to obtain sensitivity is adopted for validation and comparisons. The TL's with high surge impedance loading is obtained after the optimization process.