Medium Voltage Cable pulling anyone?

[stockexpert]

Have to ask this question here since I'm not sure where to ask it anywhere else (at this time).

To make a long story short, we pull MV cable underground (that is our distrubution system). We seem to have splices that fail every other year?! I have argued that we should pull the cable "all the way" through from one switch/transformer to the other switch/transformer but everyone says "you can't pull the cable through manholes straight through..it needs to be spliced."

Anyone have any ideas on this?

After several repeated failures, I am contemplating shutting down all power on all cables in a manhole instead of having guys work on de-energized cables with energized cables above or below. Otherwise, there is just too much risk.

THanks!

 

[roger]

We always pull MV cables through manholes without splices, as a matter of fact we just pulled a 3 phase 480' run of 15 KV cables through a manhole last Saturday.


Roger

 

[zog]

Nearly all MV cable failures are at splices or terminations, why in the world would you want to add a splice when you don't need to?

On another note, you seem to have a alot of failures, what type of testing are you doing on your cables after install and during operation?

 

[bob]

I agree with Zog and Roger. There is a distance factor to consider when pulling cable. What kind of cable are you pulling?
What kind of environment are you working? Industrial, large commercial, residential? What size and type cable? Depending on what area you are in, I would consider pulling the cable and looping around the man hole without splicing if the distance is not too long. You would have to make the pulling calculations to determine this. I have worked with PILC cable and used this method where it was possible.

 

[Hv&Lv]

Have to ask this question here since I'm not sure where to ask it anywhere else (at this time).

To make a long story short, we pull MV cable underground (that is our distrubution system). We seem to have splices that fail every other year?! I have argued that we should pull the cable "all the way" through from one switch/transformer to the other switch/transformer but everyone says "you can't pull the cable through manholes straight through..it needs to be spliced."

Anyone have any ideas on this?

After several repeated failures, I am contemplating shutting down all power on all cables in a manhole instead of having guys work on de-energized cables with energized cables above or below. Otherwise, there is just too much risk.

THanks!

What type of splices are you installing? We have only had 2-3 splices fail in over 20 years, and these were installed wrong. I agree with the others, why would you want to purposely cut the cable to install a splice just because it is in a manhole? Even for 90's, they have large rollers to pull through(around?).