Professional Documents
Culture Documents
What Is The Islanding
What Is The Islanding
What Is The Islanding
Each neutral earthing system has advantages and disadvantages for the safety of
property, electromagnetic compatibility or continuity of service. The main system
must therefore be chosen according to these criteria, but the characteristics of the
system, the receivers, and the requirements for their operation may not be
compatible with this system alone within the same installation.
How to create a specific neutral earthing system within existing one (islanding) -
photo credit: EEP
Creating a specific system in part of the installation, or islanding, may be an
appropriate solution. Let’s talk about it.
Figure 1 – Schematic diagram of the power supply in the same building or in two buildings close to
one another
Go back to contents ↑
Otherwise (example in the diagram), the power supply cable must have five
conductors (separate PE and N), or four conductors with a PE conductor
placed in contact with the cable, to provide the link between the protective
circuits of the two buildings.
If several earthing systems (identical or different) are used in the same building,
the protective circuits (PE conductors) must be linked together and interconnected
to the same equipotential link of the building concerned.
Fig
ure 2 – Schematic diagram of the power supply of several buildings
NOTE! Changing from the TN-C system to the TN-S system is not considered to be a change of
neutral earthing system, but in all cases, the TN-S system must be downstream of the TN-C
system.
Go back to contents ↑
Figur
e 3 – Connecting an installation to the public distribution system using a TN-C or TN-S system
(1) if the delivery substation and the main lV distribution board are located in the
same building, the exposed conductive parts of the substation must be linked to
the same earth connection as the lV installations.
Go back to contents ↑
Go back to contents ↑
Situation #1 – The use of a “circuit separation transformer”, to separate the load
circuit locally from the supply circuit in order to avoid the risk of indirect contact on
the separate circuit. this precaution is applicable for the supply of a device or a set
of devices grouped together.
Situation #2 – The use of an isolating transformer with separate windings to supply
a specific device that is sensitive to electromagnetic disturbance. the transformer is
thus used for its filtering properties.
Situation #3 – The use of an isolating transformer with separate windings intended
to re-create a supply source at the start of which the neutral earthing
system appropriate to the specific requirement of the island can be set up,
generally TN-S or IT.
Figure 5 – Control and isolating transformer
Go back to contents ↑
Where:
If continuity of operation is vital, high sensitivity residual current devices are not
necessary if the devices are connected directly to the installation (with no power
socket).
The special use exemption measure can be applied to supply power sockets that are not