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DESIGN AND OPTIMIZE SUBSTATION GROUNDING GRID BASED ON IEEE STD.

80 - 2000 USING GUI AND MATLAB CODES

Article  in  Journal of Engineering Science and Technology · September 2011

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DESIGN AND OPTIMIZE SUBSTATION

GROUNDING GRID BASED ON IEEE
STD. 80 - 2000 USING GUI AND
MATLAB CODES
Dr. ATTIA A. EL-FERGANY, SENIOR MEMBER ((IACSIT), MEMBER (IEEE)
Department of Electrical Power and Machines – Faculty of Engineering
Zagazig University – Zagazig (Egypt)
P.O. Box. 4459 (Zagazig)
http://www.zu.edu.eg
el_fergany@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT:
Substation grounding grid design requires a simple, but accurate tool to compute the parameters that guarantees
safety of personnel during earth faults. In this article, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) with an interactive
computer program using MATLAB 7.10 version has been developed. The developed tool allows the
computations of the total grid conductor length required for the earth grid to meet the step and touch potential
criterion for safety. The interactive method versatility has allowed configuring the grid according to the
availability of land space and value of the native soil resistivity. Calculations of minimum cross sectional Area
of grounding conductors are presented. Simple Optimization technique using iterative search are applied to
optimal design of grounding grid (conductors and rods as well) to satisfy tolerable safe touch and step voltages.
Inequality constraints of ground potential rise (GPR), ground resistance (Rg), step voltage (Estep) and touch
voltage (Etouch), are based on latest edition of ANSI/IEEE Std. 80-2000.
The viability of results of developed tool are compared with world-wide software’s like ETAP and CYMGRD
and showed to be reliable, friendly user interface, easy and practical tool for calculations of Ground grid design.
All approved shapes (Square, Rectangle, Triangle, L and T shapes) based on IEEE 80 guidelines and procedures
are implemented and tested. Executable versions may be obtained after generating C/C++ plus header files code
from MATLAB codes to run standalone.
Keywords: Grounding Grid, Step and Touch Potentials, IEEE Std. 80.

1. INTRODUCTION
Substation grounding design considerations are important to ensure the safety of personnel and the public, to
minimize hazard from transferred potential, to protect equipment insulation, to provide a discharge path for
lightning strikes, and to provide a low-resistance path to ground [1]. A good grounding system provides a low
resistance to remote earth in order to minimize the ground potential rise (GPR). For most transmission and other
large substations, the ground resistance is usually about 1 Ω or less. In smaller distribution substations, the
usually acceptable range is from 1 Ω to 5 Ω, depending on the local conditions. Many commercial tools are
available in the market to help in design of Grounding grid like ETAP [2] and CYMGND [3].
The help of Genetic Algorithm optimization of the network [4] was studied but the number conductors and
earth have already been fixed and the purpose of minimizing voltage contact, but not compared with the values
of tolerance. Optimizing the relationship between the earth systems during consecutive meshes is considered
and presented in [5]. But the only optimization variable, the total length of network Conductors earth.
ANSI/IEEE Std.80 has been widely revised for more than ten years and is generally followed as a standard for
the grounding systems. In this work, a GUI computer program has been developed. The calculations of the step
voltage, touch voltage, GPR, and grounding resistance, are based on ANSI/IEEE Std. 80 - 2000. Very simple
approach of iterative search to plan the optimal grounding grid, which includes number of unilateral mesh and
depth of the grounding grid conductors were studied and investigated. The results of proposed GGD (Grounding
Grid Design) tool compared and verified with the results of ETAP and CYMGND as well.

ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 7 July 2011 6033

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