中文摘要：

随着电力工业规模的发展和发电、送电形式的多样化,城市用电、水电送出、海底送电、资源环境保护的需要,各类电缆的应用日益广泛,包括气体绝缘电缆（管道）的应用也逐步提上日程。在总结电缆发展历史、存在的问题和国内外发展现状的基础上,对电缆今后的重点发展方向进行了探讨。讨论了电缆研究和发展中存在的高性能材料、电树枝老化、空间电荷、绝缘结构及工艺和电缆运行检测等重要问题,认为今后相当长的时间内,直流电缆在输电中的应用将越来越受到重视,但也面临由于空间电荷和非线性温度特性引起的绝缘的可靠性和新型材料的开发问题。在强调电缆需求越来越大的同时,也指出了拓展电缆应用范围与社会、经济和环境提出的新要求密切相关。提出在未来电网中,由架空线路、电力电缆线路和气体绝缘管道3种送电方式构成的混合输电线路模式,以解决远距离、大容量架空输电线路由于高海拔、跨海和生态环境保护带来的线路瓶颈问题,并对该混合输电线路模式的技术问题和可能存在的社会经济意义进行了深入探讨。强调由于用电需求增大、城市规模扩大和应用环境复杂化,交直流电力电缆的应用规模将得到大幅度增长,电力工业将迎来电力电缆和气体绝缘管道发展的新时代,随之而来的可靠性和经济性问题则是制约其发展的关键因素。

英文摘要：

All aspects, such as the expansion of power industry, the increasing diversity of power transmission, and the needs in urban power consumption, hydropower transmission and undersea transmission, and environmental protection, lead to the increasing application of power cables in both amount and types, for instance even gas insulated pipeline（GIL） is getting close to practical application. We summarized the characteristics, development and present practical application of power cables worldwide, and made prospects about the main trends of power cable development in the future. Moreo- ver, we discussed the main topics about power cables such as high performance dielectric material, aging of electrical tree, space charge accumulation, design of insulation structure, and operation detection. It is concluded that the application of DC cables will be an important part in power transmission, but it has to overcome some key problems such as space charge accumulation. The needs for power cables are closely related to the requirements in aspects of society, economy, and environment. A hybrid transmission line model of overhead transmission, power cable and gas insulated pipeline is adopted to solve the bottleneck of power transmission in the future due to altitude limit, sea crossing, and ecology issues. It is concluded that, due to the increases of energy demand, city scale, and working condition＇s complexity, a significant rise in the application scale of AC and DC power cables is expected. Power cable and GIL will become more and more important in the power industry, and the main restriction will be their reliability and economy.