Neutral Grounding Practice in Power System

• Generally on neutral grounding is provided at each voltage. There will

be several voltage levels between the generation of the power and
distribution of the power in the power system. Only one ground is
provided for each voltage level of the power system
• Grounding of the power system is provided at the source and not at the
load end
• Each of the major bus section in the system are grounded
• For generator grounding, neutral of the generator is grounding through
a resistance which limits the stator fault current. The value of the resistor
employed for the grounding the generator decides the percentage of the
generator windings left unprotected
• Synchronous motors and synchronous capacitors are provided with
reactance type of grounding. This reactance grounding provides
additional reactance which provides additional lagging currents which
nullifies the capacitive grounding currents
• When several generators are connected to a common neutral bus, the
bus is connected to the ground through a single grounding device.
Disconnect switches are used to ground the desired generators to the
neutral bus
• When several generators are operating in parallel, only one generator
neutral is earthed. This is to avoid the interference between the zero
sequence currents
• In generating stations there is a provision to ground neutral of at least
two generators, though one at a time. The other generator neutral is
grounded when the first generator is out of service
• When there are one of the two supply sources, no switching equipment
is used in the grounding circuit.
• For the protection purpose, the neutral point of the star side of the power
transformer is usually grounded
• The star connected secondary sides of the protective CTs and PTs are
grounded at one point. This ensures stable neutral, proper measurement
of the voltages and currents, kWh and kVA on the secondary side
measuring instruments and controls
• For the circuits between 3 kV and 33 kV resistance or reactance
grounding is used. But for low voltages less than 600V and high voltages
above 33 kV solid or effective grounding is used. Effective grounding
limits the voltages of healthy phases to line-to-neutral values in the
events of ground faults and also eliminates the arcing grounds. The
effective grounding causes the ground fault currents of very high
magnitudes flow through the machine. But modern day protection
systems are very sensitive and fast operating so that faults are cleared
in very short time