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Overvoltage protection of light railway transportation systems

Conference Paper · July 2003

DOI: 10.1109/PTC.2003.1304746 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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 Paper accepted for presentation at 2003 IEEE Bologna Power Tech Conference, June 23th-26th, Bologna, Italy
Overvoltage Protection of Light Railway
Transportation Systems
F. Delfino, R. Procopio, Student Member, IEEE, and M. Rossi, Student Member, IEEE
Abstract – In this paper the behavior of the power supply
system of a typical Light Railway Transportation System (LRTS)
subjected to overvoltages of atmospheric origin is analyzed, with
the purpose to determine the optimum location of the surge
arresters. A complete model of the whole power system has been
developed and the transients have been simulated with the
electromagnetic code PSCAD-EMTDC.
Index Terms—Electromagnetic transient propagation,
overvoltage protection, electric traction.
I. INTRODUCTION
L IGHT railway is a generic term which covers a wide
variety of railways and tramways. This modern electric
mass-transit system implies economy of construction in one or
more ways, such as light weight rails, wooden rails, light
bridges, minimal earthworks, sharp curves and steep
gradients, narrow track gauge and includes urban and
suburban railways, also known as rapid transit, or trolley lines
[1-2].
Reliable and effective protection against overvoltages
(atmospheric and switching) on contact wires is most
important in the smooth and constant running of the trains. To
this end, the correct positioning of the surge arresters plays a
fundamental role [3-6].
Several configurations for the protection system can be
adopted, characterized by different locations and number of
the surge arresters:
1. Surge arresters located at the DC busbars of each electrical
substation;
2. Surge arresters located at the interface between contact
line and feeder cables;
3. Surge arresters located both at the electrical substations
and at the interface between contact line and feeder cables.
The purpose of the present paper is to simulate the response of
the whole system when subjected to an overvoltage wave, in
order to determine the "best" configuration in terms both of
protection effectiveness and cost economies.
Thus, it is not aimed at modeling in an exhaustive way the
field-to-line coupling originated by a lightning event [7],
which would be so much complicated using a circuital code
like PSCAD-EMTDC [8]. As a matter of fact, this would
Federico Delfino, Renato Procopio and Mansueto Rossi are with the
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Genoa, via Opera Pia 11a
(e-mail: federico.delfino@die.unige.it; rprocopio@epsl.die.unige.it;
mansueto@die.unige.it).
0-7803-7967-5/03/$17.00 ©2003 IEEE
imply the implementation of the Agrawal method [9], which,
even in its simplified version, would make the simulation of
the system under test be so onerous from a computational
point of view.
In other words, the authors’ intention is to set up a simplified
tool, which can give some useful information for the system
design with the advantage of exhibiting good properties in
terms of CPU costs.
As will be examined more in details in the following sections,
this kind of approach, although simplified, is able to identify
among the three possibilities indicated above, the best
arresters location.
The paper is organized as follows: in section II a brief
description of the LRTS is carried out and an equivalent
circuital model is defined. In section III the results of the
simulations are presented and thoroughly discussed and in
section IV some conclusive remarks are drawn.
II. SYSTEM MODELING
A typical Light Railway Transportation System (LRTS) is
powered at 750 V DC nominally with a maximum acceptable
deviation of +20% and –33% and distributed by an Overhead
Contact System (OCS), supplied by parallel feeder cables. The
OCS can include, for each track, a contact wire and two
parallel feeder cables.
The OCS of one track (500 m long) is connected in parallel
to the OCS of the other track at each end of the route, and, in
principle, at every tram stop, substation and crossover.
The running rails are used to carry the return current and
constitute, with the return cables and the Electrical
SubStations (ESSs) return negative busbars, the negative
return system. Each ESS negative busbar is connected to the
rail by means of insulated cables.
Each LRTS ESS is fed from the Electricity Supply Board
(ESB) MV network with supply voltage 10.5 kV AC and
frequency 50 Hz. The ESS absorbs electrical power to
energize the OCS at 750 V DC and to supply auxiliary loads
at 400/230 V AC.
Each traction substation is connected to a MV generally
grounded network.
Usually, the electric system feeding the LRTS exhibits a
modular structure. The borders of each subsystem are
represented by the insulated overlaps, whose size is about 30
cm.
From the point of view of the overvoltage study, the
analysis has been limited only to one subsystem, without any
loss of generality.
This is confirmed by the fact that an overvoltage coming
from one section cannot propagate along another one by the
presence of the insulated overlap (being the air breakdown
voltage 30 kV/cm). The generic subsystem is shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 – A module of the LRTS network.
The subsystem modeling considers both the AC and DC
systems, which are briefly described in the following:
1) The AC system is represented by a MV grounded
network;
2) Each traction substation is modeled by a 3 windings
transformer with two diode bridges connected in series
forming a 12 pulse rectifier configuration 750 V DC and 900
kW rated.
3) The contact lines, the ESSs cables (length equal to 100
m) that connect the OCS directly to the substations and the
parallel feeder cables (length equal to 150 m) represent the
DC section. All the cables are characterized by a rated impulse
voltage UNI=8 kV [4]
Surge arresters of Metal-Oxide type with a rated voltage of
1.4 kV DC and a lightning impulse residual voltage of 4.08
kV have been employed.
The above-mentioned models have been implemented into
the electromagnetic code PSCAD-EMTDC [8]. This package
allows to describe with high details all the system
components.
The response of the system has been tested in the three
configurations described in Section I.
As surge arresters do not protect the contact line, the
overvoltages to be taken into account are those limited only by
the intrinsic insulation of the contact line itself. Thus, the
upper limit assumed for the overvoltages propagating from the
contact line towards the cables corresponds to the impulse
withstand voltage of the OCS insulators, namely 20 kV.
The voltage surge has been represented by a unidirectional
double-exponential wave, rising to crest from zero in about 1
µs and falling to half the amplitude in 50 µs. This is the so-
called standard lightning impulse or 1,2/50 µs wave.
The analytical expression of this wave is the following:
(
v(t ) = 20.73 e −0.4710 t − e −2.510
6 6
t
) [kV]
(1)
Before applying the voltage surge, the system has been led
to its steady-state condition that corresponds to the DC
operating voltage of 750 V. The initialization task lasts for 1.1
ms, so that all the overvoltage graphs should be considered
from this time onward.
III. NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS
The simulations have been carried out for the three cases
applying the overvoltage both near the interface between the
overhead contact line and the parallel feeder cable (point B in
Fig. 1) and near the interface between the line and the
electrical substation cable (point A in Fig. 1). Therefore, six
different situations have been examined, according to the
arresters location and to the overvoltage application point.
We are interested in verifying the observance of the
technical provisions of the voltage at the beginning of the
cables and at the substations. In addition, the voltage across
the diodes of the substation AC/DC converters has been
evaluated.
In the following, the results, relevant to all the six cases,
are presented.
A. Configuration 1: surge arresters located at the DC
busbars of each electrical substation
The location of the arresters is sketched in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2 – LRTS configuration with arresters located at the DC busbars of each
electrical substation.
Let us first apply the voltage surge at point A.
It is important to observe (see Figs. 3 and 4) that the voltages
at the beginning of the ESSs cable and of the parallel feeder
one are not so much mitigated, as could be expected by
remembering the classical theory of the propagation of waves
in a transmission line [9-11]; this is because the time in which
the wave travels along the part of line between the application
point of the overvoltage and the interface with the cable is
much shorter than the duration time of the overvoltage.
Therefore, all the reflected waves are added and the resulting
voltage is not so much smaller than the incoming voltage.
The voltages at the nearest ESS and across the most
stressed diode have been evaluated in three different
situations, characterized by an earth resistance for the surge
arresters equal to 0, 1 and 5 Ω, respectively.
Obviously, the voltage drop on the earth resistance is added
to the arrester threshold voltage (4.08 kV), thus increasing the
voltage at the point where the arrester is connected.
 25 6

5
20

15

Voltage [kV]
Voltage [kV]

10
2

5
1

0 0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms) Time (ms)
Fig. 3 – Voltage at the terminal of the ESS cable (contact line side) for the Fig. 6 – Voltage at the nearest ESS for the overvoltage applied at point A and
overvoltage applied at point A and arresters at the ESSs. arresters (earth resistance 1 Ω) at the ESSs.

12 10

10
8

6
6 Voltage [kV]

4
4

2
0

-2 0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms) Time (ms)
Fig. 4 – Voltage at the terminal of the parallel feeder cable (contact line side) Fig. 7 – Voltage at the nearest ESS for the overvoltage applied at point A and
for the overvoltage applied at point A and arresters at the ESSs. arresters (earth resistance 5 Ω) at the ESSs.

5 0,0

4
-0,5

3
Voltage [kV]
Voltage [kV]

-1,0

-1,5
1

0 -2,0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms) Time (ms)

Fig. 5 – Voltage at the nearest ESS for the overvoltage applied at point A and Fig. 8 – Voltage on the most stressed diode for the overvoltage applied at
arresters (earth resistance 0 Ω) at the ESSs. point A and arresters (earth resistance 0 Ω) at the ESSs.

As can be seen in Figs. 5-10, the more the earth resistance

grows, the higher are the voltage peaks at the substations and
on the diodes.
 conf1l vd6 Main 15
0,0

-0,5 10
Voltage [kV]

Voltage [kV]
-1,0 5

-1,5
0

-2,0
-5
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms) 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms)

Fig. 9 – Voltage on the most stressed diode for the overvoltage applied at Fig. 11 – Voltage at the terminal of the ESS cable (contact line side) for the
point A and arresters (earth resistance 1 Ω) at the ESSs. overvoltage applied at point B and arresters at the ESSs.

20
0,0

-0,5 15

-1,0
10
Voltage [kV]

Voltage [kV]

-1,5

-2,0

0
-2,5

-3,0 -5

0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms) Time (ms)

Fig. 10 – Voltage on the most stressed diode for the overvoltage applied at Fig. 12 – Voltage at the terminal of the parallel feeder cable (contact line side)
point A and arresters (earth resistance 5 Ω) at the ESSs. for the overvoltage applied at point B and arresters at the ESSs.

Applying the voltage surge at point B, one can again evaluate

the voltages at the terminals of the cables (contact line side),
at the ESSs and on the ESS diodes, which are plotted in Figs. 5

11, 12, 13, and 14, considering the arresters characterized by

an earth resistance of 1 Ω. In this case, thanks to the symmetry 4
of the system, there is no difference between the two ESSs
voltages.
As can be observed, the most stressed cable is the parallel 3
Voltage [kV]

feeder one, since the overvoltage is applied at point B. As far

as the voltage values at the cables terminals (contact line side) 2

are concerned, they are higher than the rated impulse voltage
UNI = 8 kV [4].
1
The voltages at the ESSs and on the diodes are limited by
the surge arresters to values slightly lower than the
corresponding ones of the case of voltage surge applied at 0

point A. Anyway; in both cases the presence of the arresters 0,0 0,5 1,0
Time (ms)
1,5 2,0

prevents the ESS voltage from reaching values that could Fig. 13 – Voltage at the ESSs for the overvoltage applied at point B and
result dangerous for its devices. arresters at the ESSs.
 0,0 15

-0,5

10

Voltage [kV]
Voltage [kV]

-1,0

-1,5

-2,0 0

0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms) Time (ms)

Fig. 14 – Voltage on the most stressed diode for the overvoltage applied at Fig. 16 – Voltage at the terminal of the ESS cable (contact line side) for the
point B and arresters at the ESSs. overvoltage applied at point A and arresters (earth resistance 1 Ω) at the
interface OCS/cables.

B. Configuration 2: surge arresters located at the interface

between contact line and feeder cables 5

The location of the arresters is depicted in Fig. 15.

4

3
Voltage [kV]

-1
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms)

Fig. 17 – Voltage at the terminal of the parallel feeder cable (contact line side)
for the overvoltage applied at point A and arresters (earth resistance 1 Ω) at
the interface OCS/cables.

Fig. 15 – LRTS configuration with arresters located at the interface between

12
contact line and feeder cables.

Let us simulate the application of the voltage surge at point A. 10

The results of this test are reported in Figs. 16, 17, 18 and 19
and are relevant to 1 Ω surge arresters earth resistance. These 8

results should be compared with the corresponding ones of

case 1.
Voltage [kV]

As can be seen from Fig. 16, the voltage at the ESS cable
terminal (contact line side), although lower than that of Fig. 3, 4

is higher than 8 kV, in spite of the presence of the surge

arresters. This is due to the fact that the discharge current 2
through the arrester causes a voltage drop, which is
unavoidably added to the arrester residual voltage, thus 0
originating the voltage behavior of Fig. 16. 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms)
In Fig. 17 the voltage at the terminal of the parallel feeder
cables (contact line side) is plotted. This figure reveals that the Fig. 18 – Voltage at the nearest ESS for the overvoltage applied at point A and
voltage is slightly higher than the residual voltage. arresters (earth resistance 1 Ω) at the interface OCS/cables.
 15
Moreover, in this case, the voltage at the nearest ESS is no
more limited by the surge arrester (which is not present at its
busbar). Fig. 18 highlights that the crest value reached by the
10
voltage is much higher than the one obtained in case 1 (see
Fig. 6). Such value could result too heavy for the ESS devices.
This fact obviously reflects on the diode inverse voltage that is

Voltage [kV]
shown in Fig. 19. 5

0
0

-1
-5
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms)
Voltage [kV]

-2
Fig. 21 – Voltage at the terminal of the parallel feeder cable (contact line side)
for the overvoltage applied at point B and arresters (earth resistance 1 Ω) at
the interface OCS/cables.
-3

-4
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms) 6

Fig. 19 – Voltage on the most stressed diode for the overvoltage applied at
point A and arresters (earth resistance 1 Ω) at the interface OCS/cables.
gVoltage( [kV]g)

If we apply the overvoltage at point B, we get the following

2
results (Figs. 20 - 23). Figs. 20 and 21 show the voltage at the
ESS and parallel feeder cable terminals (contact line side),
respectively. As can be expected, the higher value of voltage
0
is on the parallel feeder cable. 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
In Figs. 22 and 23 the voltages at the ESSs and on the diodes Time (ms)

are plotted. These voltages result higher than the

corresponding ones obtained in case 1. Fig. 22 – Voltage at the ESSs for the overvoltage applied at point B and
arresters (earth resistance 1 Ω) at the interface OCS/cables.

5 0,0

4 -0,5

3 -1,0
Voltage [kV]

Voltage [kV]

2 -1,5

1 -2,0

0 -2,5

-1 -3,0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms) Time (ms)

Fig. 20 – Voltage at the terminal of the ESS cable (contact line side) for the Fig. 23 – Voltage on the most stressed diode for the overvoltage applied at
overvoltage applied at point B and arresters (earth resistance 1 Ω) at the point B and arresters (earth resistance 1 Ω) at the interface OCS/cables.
interface OCS/cables.
 6
As a general comment, one can conclude that this
configuration does not seem to be effective, since the presence
of the arresters at the interface between contact line and cables
could not be sufficient to limit the cable voltages. Moreover 4

the ESS devices could be damaged since they are not

protected by surge arresters.

Voltage [kV]
2
C. Configuration 3: surge arresters located both at the
interface between contact line and feeder cables and at the
DC busbars of each electrical substation
0
The location of the arresters is depicted in Fig. 24. In all these
cases the earth resistance of the OCS arresters is 5 Ω, (since it
is highly impractical to obtain a lower value) while the earth
resistance of the ESSs ones is assumed to be 1 Ω. -2
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms)
Fig. 26 - Voltage at the terminal of the parallel feeder cable (contact line side)
for the overvoltage applied at point A and arresters located both at the
interface OCS/cables (earth resistance 5 Ω) and at the ESSs (earth resistance 1
Ω).

4
Voltage [kV]

Fig. 24 – LRTS configuration with arresters at the interface OCS-cables and at 2

the ESSs.

1
Figs. 25 and 26 show the voltage at the terminal both of the
ESS cable and of the parallel feeder cable (contact line side),
0
respectively as a consequence of the application of the voltage 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
surge at point A. The benefits deriving from the connection of Time (ms)

the surge arresters to the ESS busbars are highlighted in Fig. Fig. 27 - Voltage at the nearest ESS for the overvoltage applied at point A and
arresters located both at the interface OCS/cables (earth resistance 5 Ω) and at
27 that shows the voltage at the nearest substation. the ESSs (earth resistance 1 Ω).
In order to investigate the dependence of the voltage peaks on
the earth resistance, the analysis has been repeated with OCS
arresters earth resistance of 1 Ω. In Table I the values of the TABLE I
VOLTAGE PEAKS ON THE DIFFERENT DEVICES WITH OCS ARRESTERS EARTH
peaks in both cases are compared, highlighting that there is a
RESISTANCE OF 1 AND 5 Ω AND VOLTAGE SURGE APPLIED AT POINT A.
not negligible difference of such peaks in the two cases.
20

Earth resistance (Ω) 1 5

15
Parallel feeder voltage peak (kV) 4.2 5.6

ESS cable voltage peak (kV) 13 16.8

Voltage [kV]

10
Nearest ESS voltage peak (kV) 4.8 5

5 Applying the overvoltage at point B, one can again plot the

voltage at the contact line terminal of the ESS and of the
parallel feeder cables, as well as the ESSs voltage, as shown
0 in the following three figures.
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0
Time (ms) Also in this case the test has been repeated considering an
Fig. 25 - Voltage at the terminal of the ESS cable (contact line side) for the OCS arrester earth resistance of 1 Ω. The obtained results,
overvoltage applied at point A and arresters located both at the interface
OCS/cables (earth resistance 5 Ω) and at the ESSs (earth resistance 1 Ω). here not reported for the sake of brevity, confirm what already
noticed about the strong dependence of the voltage peaks on
the earth resistance of the OCS arresters.
It can be highlighted that the effect of locating the arresters
also along the OCS (i.e. at each interface OCS/cables) is
strongly dependent on the value of their earth resistance (as
such resistance grows up, the voltage peaks increase).
6 IV. CONCLUSIONS
4
Voltage [kV]
Thus, since the currents involved in a lightning event are very
high, this configuration, which is more expensive than the first
and can create problems of maintenance, could not be as
effective as expected. In conclusion, the first solution seems to
be the best.
In this paper, the response of the power supply system of a
typical LRTS to an overvoltage wave has been investigated.
A detailed model of the system has been derived using the
electromagnetic code PSCAD-EMTDC, in order to determine
the optimum location and number of the surge arresters.

2
The comparative study has pointed out that the solution
where the arresters are only at the ESSs is the best one, since
it represents a good compromise between a sufficiently safe
0
configuration and a cheap one.
Of course, the study has been carried out developing a tool
whose aim is not to describe in detail the field-to-line coupling
-2
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 due to a lightning event, but to give useful guidelines to a
Time (ms)
Fig. 28 - Voltage at the terminal of the ESS cable (contact line side) for the
designer with low computational costs.
overvoltage applied at point B and arresters located both at the interface
V. REFERENCES
OCS/cables (earth resistance 5 Ω) and at the ESSs (earth resistance 1 Ω).
15 [1] Light Rail Transit Association, UK Development Group, Fact Sheet N.
102, July 2000.
[2] R. Buckley, Tramways and Light Railways of Switzerland and Austria,
National Atlases from LRTA, London, 2000.
10 [3] EN 50124-1 (March 2001): Railway applications – Insulation
coordination. Part I: Basic requirements. Clearances and creepage
distances for all electrical and electronic equipment.
[4] EN 50124-2 (March 2001): Railway applications – Insulation
Voltage [kV]

5 coordination. Part II: Overvoltages and related protection.

[5] EN 50123-4 (March 1999): Railway applications – Fixed installations
DC switchgear. Part IV: Outdoors DC in-line switch-disconnectors,
disconnectors and DC and earthing switches.
0 [6] EN 50163 (November 1995): Railway applications. Supply voltages of
traction system.
[7] F. Delfino, P. Girdinio, R. Procopio, M. Rossi, “Technique for
computing the response of a line of finite length excited by HF
-5 electromagnetic fields”, IEE Proceedings on Science, Measurements and
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 Technology, vol. 149, n. 5, September 2002, pp. 289-292.
Time (ms)
[8] PSCAD-EMTDC version 3.0, The Professional's Tool for
Fig. 29 - Voltage at the terminal of the parallel feeder cable (contact line side) Electromagnetic Transients Simulation, Manitoba HVDC Research
for the overvoltage applied at point B and arresters located both at the Centre Inc., 2001.
interface OCS/cables (earth resistance 5 Ω) and at the ESSs (earth resistance 1 [9] C. R. Paul, Analysis of multiconductor transmission lines, John Wiley &
Ω). Sons, New York, 1994.
5 [10] F. Tesche, M. Ianoz, T. Karlsson, EMC analysis methods and
computational models, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1997.
[11] E. F. Vance, Coupling to shielded cables, Wiley Interscience, NY, 1978.
4
Federico Delfino was born in Savona, Italy, on February 28th, 1972. He
graduated cum laude in Electrical Engineering from the University of Genoa,
3
in 1997 and received the PhD degree from the same University in 2001. He is
currently a Researcher at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the
Voltage [kV]

University of Genoa. His research interests are mainly focused on

electromagnetic field theory, numerical techniques applied to EMC and TL
2
theory.
Renato Procopio was born in Savona, Italy, on March 6th, 1974. He graduated
cum laude in Electrical Engineering from the University of Genoa, in 1999.
1 He is currently working on his PhD on lightning return stroke current
modeling and TL theory as well as on Power Quality improvement in
Distribution networks.
0 Mansueto Rossi was born in Savona, Italy, on April 10th, 1974. He graduated
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 cum laude in Electrical Engineering from the University of Genoa, in 1999.
Time (ms)
He is currently working towards the PhD degree at the Department of
Fig. 30 - Voltage at the ESSs for the overvoltage applied at point B and Electrical Engineering of the University of Genoa. His research interests are
arresters located both at the interface OCS/cables (earth resistance 5 Ω) and at focused on numerical modeling of electromagnetic fields and EMC.
the ESSs (earth resistance 1 Ω).

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