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Steps to Ensure Effective Substation Grounding (1)

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Steps to ensure effective substation grounding (photo by peterhousephotography.co.uk)

Substation Grounding
An electrical substation is a critical resource in a power system. Safe operation of a substation calls for a properly
designed and installed grounding system. A well-designed grounding system will ensure reliable performance of the
substation over its entire service life.
How does good grounding improve substation reliability?
Good grounding path of sufficiently low impedance ensures fast clearing of faults. A fault remaining in the system for
long may cause several problems including those of power system stability. Faster clearing thus improves overall
reliability.
It also ensures safety.
A ground fault in equipment causes the metallic enclosure potential to rise above the true ground potential. An
improper grounding results in a higher potential and also results in delayed clearing of the fault (due to insufficient
current flow).
This combination is essentially unsafe because any person coming into contact with the enclosure is exposed to
higher potentials for a longer duration.

Therefore, substation reliability and safety must be as built-in as possible by good grounding scheme, which in turn
will ensure faster fault clearing and low enclosure potential rise.

Ensuring Proper Grounding

The following steps, when put into practice, will ensure a reliable, safe and trouble-free substation grounding
system:
1. Size conductors for anticipated faults
2. Use the right connections
3. Ground rod selection
4. Soil preparation
5. Attention to step and touch potentials
6. Grounding using building foundations **
7. Grounding the substation fence **
8. Special attention to operating points **
9. Surge arrestors must be grounded properly **
10. Grounding of cable trays **
11. Temporary grounding of normally energized parts **
** Will be published in next part of this technical article

1. Size Conductors For Anticipated Faults

Conductors must be large enough to handle any anticipated faults without fusing (melting).
Failure to use proper fault time in design calculations creates a high risk of melted conductors. Two aspects govern
the choice of conductor size: the first is the fault current that will flow through the conductor and the second is the time
for which it can flow.
The fault current depends on the impedance of the ground fault loop. The time of current flow is decided by the
setting of the protective relays/circuit-breaking devices, which will operate to clear the fault.
The IEEE 80 suggests using a time of 3.0 s for the design of small substations. This time is also equal to the shorttime rating of most switchgear.
Go to Grounding Steps

2. Use the Right Connections

Grounding Connections, Resistance Test and Bonding Test

It is very evident that the connections between conductors and the main grid and between the grid and ground rods
are as important as the conductors themselves in maintaining a permanent low-resistance path to ground.
The basic issues here are:
1. The type of bond used for the connection of the conductor in its run, with the ground grid and with the ground
rod
2. The temperature limits, which a joint can withstand.
The most frequently used grounding connections are mechanical pressure type (which will include bolted,
compression and wedge-type construction) and exothermically welded type.
Pressure-type connections produce a mechanical bond between conductor and connector by means of a tightened
bolt-nut or by crimping using hydraulic or mechanical pressure. This connection either holds the conductors in place
or squeezes them together, providing surface-to-surface contact with the exposed conductor strands.
On the other hand, the exothermic process fuses the conductor ends together to form a molecular bond between all
strands of the conductor.
Temperature limits are stated in standards such as IEEE 80 and IEEE 837 for different types of joints based on the
joint resistance normally obtainable with each type. Exceeding these temperatures during flow of fault currents may
result in damage to the joint and cause the joint resistance to increase, which will result in further overheating.
The joint will ultimately fail and result in grounding system degradation or total loss of ground reference with
disastrous results.
Go to Grounding Steps

3. Ground Rod Selection

In MV and HV substations, where the source and load are connected through long overhead lines, it often happens
that the ground fault current has no metallic path and has to flow through the groundmass (earth). This means that the
ground rods of both source and load side substations have to carry this current to or from the groundmass.

The ground rod system should be adequate to carry this current and ground resistance of the grounding system
assumes importance.
The length, number and placement of ground rods affect the resistance of the path to earth. Doubling of ground rod
length reduces resistance by a value of 45%, under uniform soil conditions. Usually, soil conditions are not
uniform and it is vital to obtain accurate data by measuring ground rod resistance with appropriate instruments.
For maximum efficiency, grounding rods should be placed no
closer together than the length of the rod. Normally, this is 10
ft (3 m). Each rod forms an electromagnetic shell around it,
and when the rods are too close, the ground currents of the
shells interfere with each other.
It should be noted that as the number of rods is increased,
the reduction of ground resistance is not in inverse
proportion. Twenty rods do not result in 1/20th of
the resistance of a single rod but only reduce it by a factor of
1/10th.
For economic reasons, there is a limit to the maximum
distance between rods.

Substation grounding rod

Normally, this limit is taken as 6 m. At more than 6 m, the cost of additional conductor needed to connect the rods
makes the design economically attractive.
In certain cases, the substation layout may not have the required space and acquiring the needed space may involve
substantial expense. Four interconnected rods on 30 m centers will reduce resistivity 94% over one rod but require at
least 120 m of conductor.
On the other hand, four rods placed 6 m apart will reduce resistivity 81% over one rod and use only 24 m
of conductor.
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4. Soil Preparation
Soil resistivity is an important consideration in substation grounding system design. The lower the resistivity, the
easier it is to get a good ground resistance.
Areas of high soil resistivity and those with ground frost ( which inturn causes the soil resistivityto increase by orders
of magnitude) need special consideration. The highest ground resistivity during the annual weather cycle should form
the basis of the design since the same soil will have much higher resistivity during dry weather when percentage of
moisture in the ground becomes very low.

Grounding Tests - Earth Potential and Grounding Mesh Effectiveness (courtesy of DCS Engineering Sdn Bhd - www.dcsesb.com)

One approach to take care of this problem is to use deep driven ground rods so that they are in contact with the soil
zone deep enough to remain unaffected by surface climate.
The other approach is to treat the soil around the ground rod with chemical substances that have the capacity to
absorb atmospheric/soil moisture.
Use of chemical rods is one such solution.
Go to Grounding Steps

5. Attention to Step and Touch Potentials

Limiting step and touch potential to safe values in a substation is vital to personnel safety.
Step potential is the voltage difference between a persons feet and is caused by the voltage gradient in the soil at
the point where a fault enters the earth. The potential gradient is steepest near the fault location and thereafter
reduces gradually. Just 75 cm away from the entry point, voltage usually will have been reduced by 50%.
Thus at a point of 75 cm from the fault (which is less than the distance of a normal step), a fatal potential of a few
kilovolts can exist.
Touch potential represents the same basic hazard, except the potential exists between the persons hand and his or

her feet. This happens when a person standing on the ground touches a structure of the substation, which is
conducting the fault current into ground (for example, when an insulator fixed on a gantry flashes over, the gantry
dissipates the current to earth).
Since the likely current path within the human body runs through the arm and heart region instead of through the
lower extremities, the danger of injury or death is far greater in this case. For this reason, the safe limit of touch
potential is usually much lower than that of step potential.
In both situations, the potential can essentially be greatly reduced by an equipotential wire mesh safety
mat installed just below ground level.
This mesh will have to be installed in the immediate vicinity of any switches or equipment a worker might touch, and
connected to the main ground grid. Such an equipotential mesh will equalize the voltage along the workers path and
between the equipment and his or her feet. With the voltage difference (potential) thus essentially eliminated, the
safety of personnel is virtually guaranteed.
An equipotential wire mesh safety mat is usually fabricated from #6 or #8 AWG copper or copper-clad wire to
form a 0.5 0.5 m or 0.5 1 m mesh. Many other mesh sizes are available.
To ensure continuity across the mesh, all wire crossings are brazed with a 35% silver alloy. Interconnections between
sections of mesh and between the mesh and the main grounding grid should be made so as to provide a permanent
low-resistance high-integrity connection.
Go to Grounding Steps
To bi continued in part 2
Resource: Practical Grounding, Bonding, Shielding and Surge Protection G. Vijayaraghavan; Mark Brown; Malcolm
Barnes (Get this book at Amazon )