GAS INSULATED SUBSTATION (GIS)

B Tech Seminar Report

Submitted in partial fulfillment for the award of the Degree of

Bachelor of Technology in Electrical and Electronics Engineering

by

NIDHEESH K (Roll No.B100163EE)

Department of Electrical Engineering

NATIONAL INISTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CALICUT
NIT Campus P.O., Calicut - 673601, India
2014
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the thesis entitled “GAS INSULATED

SUBSTATION” is a bona fide record of the seminar done by NIDHEESH K (Roll
No.B100163EE) under my supervision and guidance, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the award of Degree of Bachelor of Technology in Electrical &
Electronic Engineering from National Institute of Technology Calicut for the year 2014

Dr.MUKTHI BARAI
Asst. Professor
Dept. of Electrical Engineering

Place:
Date:
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I am greatly indebted to the Dr. Susy Thomas Ph.D.,, Professor and Head of the Department for
her motivation and guidance through the course of this seminar work. She has been responsible
for providing us with lot of splendid opportunities, which has shaped our career. Her advice
ideas and constant support has engaged us on and helped us to get through in difficult time.

I express my profound gratitude to my seminar coordinator, Dr.Mukthi Barai. (Ph.D.), Asst.

Prof., who has been a constant source of encouragement and support for guiding the course of
the seminar work.

I express my gratitude to thank Mr.S.Raghu,(Adhoc-Faculty), Mr.Sivaprasad (Ph.D Scholar)

for providing his valuable support and advice during the development of seminar report.

I express my gratitude to the all the faculty and lab programmers of Department of Electrical
and Electronics for their needy and continuous support in technical assistance.

NIDHEESH K
 ABSTRACT
The developments of this modern world has resulted in greater demand for power distribution.
As a result more and more substation are required for various purposes.

But the availability of space and the surrounding conditions stands as a major disadvantage for
the establishment of an Air Insulated Substation or commonly known as Open Air Substations.

To overcome this difficulty, nowadays we go for Gas Insulated Substations. The main difference
of these substation with former one is that, the components of this kind of substations will be
placed in a gas chamber which act as the primary insulator when compared to AIS (Insulated
Substation) where the primary insulator is normal air.

So these kind of substations are used mostly nowadays as they provide a major solution to most
of the difficulties caused by AIS. They are compact, easy to access and easy to maintain while
compared to open air type.

In this report a brief overview of Gas insulated station and its features will be discussed
Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Substation 2
2.1 Substation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2 Classification of Substation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

3 Air Insulted Substation (AIS) 4

3.1 Air Insulted Substation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

4 Gas Insulted Substation (GIS) 5

4.1 Why SF6 ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2 WHy GIS over AIS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.3 Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.4 Drawbacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.5 Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.6 Maintenance Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

5 SF6 / N2 Mixture for GIS 9

6 Future Trends 10

7 Conclusion 11

8 Bibliography 12

i
Chapter 1

Introduction

In this modern age of development and expansion , the need for power has drastically gone up.
This resulted in greater demand for expansion of distribution and transmission sector, wherein
the requirement of a substation at different location became necessary.

A major disadvantage that affected the location of the normal open air substation in most of
location was the unavailability of land. Also the adverse climatic and surrounding conditions
made this more difficult.

As a solution to this difficulty Gas Insulated Substation was implemented as they require only
less amount of space as they require less clearance space around them. Moreover they are
properly insulated from external atmosphere as they are placed in a chamber of gases without
any atmospheric contact.

Gas insulated substation has provided a major breakthrough in the area of development for
distribution and transmission sector as they are very compact and easy to be established. Due
to these advantages, most of the open air substations which are located in the urban area are
being replaced by Gas insulated substations (GIS).

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Chapter 2

Substation

2.1 Substation
A substation is a major part of an electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system.
Substations transform voltage from high to low level, or the reverse, and also perform any of
several other important functions. Electric power may flow through several substations at dif-
ferent voltage levels during its transfer from the generating station and consumer.

Substations may be owned and operated by an electrical utility, or may be owned by a large
industrial or commercial customer.

A substation may include transformers to change voltage levels between high transmission volt-
ages and lower distribution voltages, or at the interconnection of two different transmission
voltages.

The word substation comes from the days before the distribution system became a grid. As cen-
tral generation stations became larger, smaller generating plants were converted to distribution
stations, receiving their energy supply from a larger plant instead of using their own genera-
tors. The first substations were connected to only one power station, where the generators were
housed, and were subsidiaries of that power station.

A substation can also be defined as ”An assembly of apparatus installed to control transmission
and distribution of electric power”.

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2.2 Classification of Substation
There are many ways to classify substations. They can be classified depending upon the type
of work they do or depending on the type of insulation they use.

The classification of substation based on the type of functioning is as follows.

Transmission substation
Substations which are located in between two transmission line. Their major functions include
conversion between two transmission voltage, power factor correction and also connection be-
tween two power stations.

Distribution substation
These are the common substations that we see. They are mainly used for stepping down of
transmission voltage for distribution ie they form an interconnection between transmission and
distribution system.

Collector substation
They are used in cases of distributed power generation where power which are generated at dif-
ferent locations are collected and transmitted as a single quantity. They mainly act as collection
centre.

Converter substation
These kind of substations are used in transmission sector where DC-DC transmission s lines are
present. They convert voltages between AC to DC or vice-versa depending on the condition.

Switching substation
These are transformer less substation operating only at a single voltage level. They are used
for switching the current to back-up lines or for parallelizing circuits in case of failure or fault
conditions. they are usually found in long distant transmission.

Depending on the type of primary insulation used substations can be classified into two type.
they are Air Insulated Substation and Gas Insulated Substation. The major difference between
these substations is in their primary insulation which is atmospheric air in the former and a
specified gas (SF6 ) in latter.
Chapter 3

Air Insulted Substation (AIS)

3.1 Air Insulted Substation

These are commonly seen outdoor substations wherein air act as the primary insulation between
various instruments that are being used . They are used as indoor substation in a very few
cases. the main advantage of these kind of substations are that they easy to be expanded where
availability of space is not a matter of concern. Moreover these kind of substations have excellent
overview so they are easily accessible. as result handling of these kind of substations can be
made easy.

3.2 Limitations
Even though these kind of substations are more commonly used nowadays, they suffer from
many limitations. These limitations has lead us to thing about an alternative. Following are
the major limitations faced by Air Insulated Substations.
• Due to the poor dielectric strength of atmospheric air, these substations are of larger
dimensions as they greater statutory clearence

• Insulation failure due to deterioration is a major problem as they are exposing to ambient
conditions and also due to the pollution in atmosphere.
• A large amount of space is wasted in order to maintain the clearance level required as per
standards.

• Due to the external condition lifetime of the steel structures used degrades. Hence they
require regular checking and inspection.
• In order to establish such a substation a larger planning and execution time is required.
• Due to these limitations regular maintenance and checking are required.

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Chapter 4

Gas Insulted Substation (GIS)

Mainly in these kind of substations all the instruments used are kept in a metallic chamber
containing a particular gas which act as primary insulation between instruments. Generally
Sulphur Hexaflouride (SF6) gas is used as the primary insulating medium. SF6 gas is used
because of its superior dielectric properties when used at moderate pressure for phase to phase
and phase to ground insulation. These kind of substations are available for voltage ratings of
72.5 kV, 145 kV, 300 kV and 420 kV and above.

In these kind of substation various equipments like Circuit Breakers, Bus-Bars, Isolators, Load
Break Switches, Current Transformers, Voltage Transformers, Earthing Switches, etc. housed
in metal enclosed modules filled with SF6 gas. These metal modules are properly earthed and
insulated.

4.1 Why SF6 ?

There are few major reasons why SF6 is more preferred compared to other gases in GIS. They
are
• Non-toxicity and chemical stability nature of the gas helps in inertness of the substation
• SF6 is a Man-made gas thus it is easily available and can be produced for required amounts
• It has a very long life time of 800 to 3600 years.
• Insulating properties of SF6 is 3-times that of air thus reducing the space clearance between
the instruments.
• SF6 is Colorless and heavier than air.
• As the gas is water insoluble it can be used in humid conditions.
• The risk of fire hazards will be reduced dramatically as the gas is inflammable.

4.2 WHy GIS over AIS?

There are many factors that lead us to prefer GIS over AIS. Most of these factors include major
limitations of AIS as GIS provide solution to them all.

Due to the better insulation property of the gas used in GIS , the clearance space required is

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reduced graetly, thereby reducing the total space used by the whole station to a great extend.
This is one of the main reason why we are adopting GIS over AIS in this modern world were
space is matter of issue.

safety factor of these substations are high as the gases used are mostly inflammable and inert
in nature. thus it makes a subsation more safer place to work in. This inertness of the gas also
result in reduction in the pollution level that will be caused by the substation.

GIS subsations are highly reliable when compared to AIS as they are not easily affected by the
external conditions, so reliability of power supply can be maintained.

Due to above mentioned properties these substations have low maintenance costs. Moreover
the site erection time for these kind are much lower as they are compact and easily assembled
without much complications.

4.3 Advantages
The major advantages of using GIS are:
• It occupies very less space (1/10th) compared to ordinary substations.

• GIS have no risks for fire and explosion due to leakage of oil
• Number of outages due to the fault is less
• They are Maintenance Free.
• It can be assembled at workshop and modules can be commissioned in the plant easily.

• They generate no noise and have no radio interference

• can be located close to load center there by reducing transmission and distribution systems
• It can be located in industrial areas where space and pollution problems exist . Also it
can be located at mountain areas as it is not affected by ice or snow.

4.4 Drawbacks
Even though GIS are better than AIS in many ways, they suffer from many drawbacks. Follow-
ing are the major drawbacks that GIS suffer from.

Initial installation cost of these kind of substations are high when compared with AIS. This
heavy investment cost though can be maintained in long run as the maintenance cost is low,
but the first time investment can be considered as a huge amount.

There is a need for pressurised gas system for these kind of substation and also proper zoning
of these chambers must be done inorder to avoid hazards. excessive damage can be caused due
to these internal fault due to the presence of pressurized gas chambers.

SF6 gas pressure must be monitored regularly that too in each compartment because the reduc-
tion of gas pressure in any of the module can result in dangerous flash overs and faults which
may result in breakdown of the system. Another major tension factor is that SF6 gas is involved
in ozone depletion and global warming , so no leakage of that should be allowed.
4.5 Application
Due to the advantages over AIS , GIS have widespread applications.

They are commonly used in high voltage applications wherein the voltage level is above 115kV
. This is because when air is used as primary insulation a large clearence has to be given as the
break down voltage of air is very low. where as in case of GIS the clearance will be very low as
the breakdown voltage of the gas used is around 10 times higher than that of air.

These kind of substations are also used in low voltage level in urban areas and also for in-
door applications as they are very much compact and uses very limited space. In urban areas
these substations are becoming very important due to the unavailability of space and polluted
environments.
4.6 Maintenance Operation
Though the maintenance operation cost of these kind of substations are small, there are a few
factors which needs to be checked on a regular basis in order to avoid any mishaps. Following
are the parameters which need to be checked
• general condition of the equipments, supporting structures, earthing connections etc.

• gas pressure and density. also on the trend in which they are changing if at all they are
changing.
• quality of the gas inside the chamber. Gases like HF, SO2 , O2 , H2 O may be present in
the chamber due to chemical reactions. som regular check on the quality of these gases
must be done.

• calibration of the instruments attached like pressure gauges, density gauges, transducer
must be done periodically.
• alarm operations must be set and tested periodically so that at a time of hazard all are in
working condition.

ion
The values or condition of these parameters decide upon proper functioning of these equipments
and in total the whole substat
Chapter 5

SF6 / N2 Mixture for GIS

New studies have revealed that a mixture of these gases provide a better result as their combined
effect increases the dielectric by greater amount.

small quantities of SF6 in N2 can improve their dielectric strength drastically. for instance all
the dielectric strengthen of SF6 alone can be achieved by adding 20% SF6 to N2 . thus it reduces
the usage of SF6 which is an not environmental friendly gas.

SF6 / N2 mixture is less susceptible to the effect of field non uniformity than pure SF6 . thus
mitigating the effects of particles and surface protrusions.

so nowadays great efforts are being made in this field. Also while substation installations we go
for SF6 / N2 mixture .

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Chapter 6

Future Trends

The future trends that is been going on in this field are as follows:

• Usage of vacuum circuit breaker cells in the medium high voltage GIS.
• Optimization of GIS design to allow easier maintenance.
• Development of DC GIS for incorporating into expanding national/international HVDC
systems.

• Search for replacement gases for SF6 as they cause global warming.
• The research on most promising an 80%/20% SF6 / N2 mixture.
• Replacement of existing AIS by GIS will accelerate especially near urban centers.

Further studies and development in these areas will result in proper and better power system
operation.

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Chapter 7

Conclusion

The developments of this modern world has resulted in greater demand for power generation and
distribution. As a result more and more substation are required for various purposes ranging
from household supplies to industrial need.

Conventional solution is to establish Air Insulated Substation or commonly known as Open Air
SubstationsBut today such large scale expansion is not a viable solution because of our ever
increasing population, the availability of space suitable for construction and the amicable sur-
rounding pushing the need for a appropriate alternative. This was a subject of past and will
be a subject of research of future as well. After a wide spread research spanning two decades,
people nowadays go for Gas Insulated Substations.

Gas Insulated Substations a major substituent for AIS nowadays finds it way for Extra High
Voltage and Ultra High Voltage transmission. In this report an emphasis was given of intro-
duction of Gas Insulated substation, its advantages, disadvantages and its comparison with
conventional Air Insulated substation was presented in a brief manner. Some emphasis was also
given to the future of Gas Insulated substation where the important areas to be studied include
more conservative designs better particle control, improved gas handling and decomposition
product management techniques. The seminar ended on a positive note that in order to achieve
and maintain high levels of availability requires a more integrated approach to quality control
by both users and manufactures.

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Chapter 8

Bibliography

1. http://www.alstom.com/grid/products-and-services/high-voltage-power-products/substations/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchgear

3. http://betaengineering.com/en-us/areasofexpertise/gasinsulatedsubstations.aspx
4. http : //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricals ubstation
5. http : //iitbhu.ac.in/conf erences/eee/npsc/doc/kdst utorial.pdf

6. http://www.alstom.com/Global/Grid/Resources/Documents/Products/GIS%20Global%20Offer/F35%2072
.5%20-%20145-%20170%20kV%20Gasinsulated%20substations%20Brochure%20GB.fr-FR.pdf
7. http://www.abb.co.in/industries/db0003db004333/c12573e7003305cbc125703e0040189b.aspx

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