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A Practical Approach For Determining The Grounding Grid PDF
A Practical Approach For Determining The Grounding Grid PDF
Abstract—This paper starts from the premise that ground re- ground resistance is too high, personnel may be killed or injured
sistance is independent of earth-fault current and presents a new and equipment may be damaged.
method for calculating the ground resistance of grounding grids Grounding grids are, without doubt, the most important part
using the finite-element method. The results obtained using the
method proposed are compared with results measured experimen- of an electrical system from the point of view of the safety of
tally and results published by other authors. Once ground resis- people and equipment. The safety, reliability, and correct op-
tance and earth-fault current are known, grid potential and touch- eration of electrical power systems depend on the standard of
and-step voltages can be calculated. The main advantage of the design and construction of their grounding grids.
method proposed here is that it permits us to analyze symmetrical The main jobs of a grounding grid are:
and nonsymmetrical grids of any shape in uniform soils. It provides
a fast-resolution industrial application with acceptable results for • to protect personnel against electrical risks by limiting
calculating the ground resistance of grounding grids of any shape. the overvoltages to which they may be exposed if ground
The results obtained with the proposed method are used as the faults occur in substations or generating stations;
basis for formulating an easy-to-use equation for calculating the • to ensure safety and continuity of electrical equipment by
ground resistance of grounding grids in uniform soils.
limiting the overvoltages that can appear under extreme
Index Terms—Earth potentials, grounding grids, ground resis- operation conditions or in case of accident;
tance, modeling, simulation, step voltage. • to ensure correct operation of equipment and electrical
protection devices by enabling ground faults to be detected
I. INTRODUCTION and action to be taken to disconnect those areas of the elec-
trical installation where faults have occurred.
The second method is based on determining the electrode ca- The method presented may prove highly useful in deter-
pacitance on the basis of the ratio of electric charge to potential mining precise formulas for calculating ground resistance in
once the electric field in the soil has been calculated. different kinds of grounding grid, with no need to build and
Once the grounding grid potential and the earth-fault current measure large numbers of grounding grids or to study scale
are known, the ground resistance of the grounding grid can be models [23]. Taking the ground resistance results obtained for
calculated by applying Ohm’s law. different configurations of grounding grids as our data, we have
Simple formulas for calculating ground resistance have been drawn up an easy-to-use equation for calculating the ground
proposed by Dwight et al., [5]–[14] for grounding grids without resistance of grounding grids in uniform soils.
vertical ground rods buried in uniform soils and by Salama [15]
and Chow [16] for grids with and without ground rods in two- III. METHOD
layer soils. As indicated above, the greatest difficulties in determining
Over the past 30 years, calculation methods for deter- ground resistance using FEM are:
mining the ground resistance and the step-and-touch voltages 1) the shape and size of the finite-element model;
of grounding systems have been proposed by Dawalibi, et 2) the potential to be assigned to the conductors in the
al., [17]–[20]. These methods generally involve symmetrical grounding grid;
grounding grids in uniform or two-layer soils. Using different 3) the potential to be assigned to the boundary in the finite-el-
mathematical techniques, they enable us to model actual sys- ement model (the numerical value of the boundary condi-
tems in theoretical systems with comparable results. tion is unknown and depends on the soil volume of the
Recently, studies based on the finite-element method (FEM) model and on the potential assigned to the grid).
have been used to calculate the ground resistance of grounding To solve these problems, we will apply these two premises:
grids. The first studies to simulate grounding grid behavior via 1) at power frequencies, the ground resistance of a grounding
FEM were based on calculating ground resistance for an arbi- grid depends solely on the shape and size of the grounding
trary grid potential. The grid current for the grid potential set is grid and on the soil structure (conductivity and thickness
determined by means of a current flow analysis. Once the cur- of each layer of soil), so that it is independent of the nu-
rent is calculated, ground resistance is determined as the quo- merical value of the earth-fault current;
tient between the voltage (grid potential less boundary poten- 2) the soil is an infinite medium with a flat surface.
tial) and the current calculated [21]. If the ground resistance of a grounding grid is independent
In this method, it was difficult to select the size of the model of the earth-fault current, then it must also be independent of
(earth distance to be considered starting from the grounding the grounding grid potential; consequently, the grid potential
grid), and this conditioned the numerical value calculated for can be set at any numerical value in the finite-element model
ground resistance (the potential at each point in the soil is re- for calculating the grounding resistance. Another consideration
lated to the distance between that point and the grounding grid). is that when the grid potential (earth-fault current) is modified,
To decrease ground resistance calculation errors, electrical so is the distribution of potentials in the soil and, therefore, so
power engineers were forced to analyze models of different is the boundary potential to be set in the finite-element model.
sizes with a high number of nodes, but the low levels of accu- This problem is tackled below.
racy of the results and the long calculation times required meant From the second statement above, it can be deduced that the
that this method was not very feasible. Another problem is the ground volume should be considered as infinite, with zero po-
numerical value of the boundary conditions to be applied for the tential at the boundary. Of course, this is not possible, so to solve
size of the model considered. this problem, we have to find a finite model in which a boundary
To overcome the difficulties of the method outlined above, potential of a known value can be defined.
another method was developed that enabled ground resistance For any infinite volume with electrical potential at the
to be determined starting from the dissipated power or from the grid and zero (or any other numerical value) at the boundary,
energy stored by the electric field in the model [22]. the equipotent surfaces tend to become semi-spherical as we
The development of finite-element software and improve- move away from the grid. Theoretically, the equipotent surface
ments in the performance of PCs as calculation tools mean that is semi-spherical only for distances close to infinite (Fig. 1),
we can now solve systems with more equations than just a few but for calculation methods that have a practical application,
years ago, and do so more quickly. With three-dimensional can be much shorter. Our experience in designing grounding
(3-D)-solid modeling techniques, we can now use finite-ele- grids and measuring their ground resistance shows that for uni-
ment models with small element sizes close to grounding grid form soils, can be determined by means of the following ex-
rods. pression:
In view of the foregoing, this paper presents a method for
calculating ground resistance in which only a single test using (1)
FEM needs to be performed, thus saving time in determining
ground resistance. where is the diagonal dimension of the grounding grid in
This method has the additional advantage of being indepen- meters.
dent of the boundary condition, shape, and size of the grid and Once it is accepted that the equipotent surface at a distance
of the soil structure. is semi-spherical (the error implicit in this assumption may be
GUÉMES et al.: PRACTICAL APPROACH FOR DETERMINING GROUND RESISTANCE 1263
Fig. 2. Resistance R .
B. Determination of Resistance
(3)
Resistance , which is small compared to , can be calcu-
lated by applying expression (3) to calculate the resistance of a
where is the surface that completely surrounds an electrode, semi-spherical resistor of internal radius and infinite external
is any trajectory that joins the two electrodes, is the electrical radius (Fig. 3).
conductivity, is the electric field, and is the current density. In these conditions, (3) is transformed into the following ex-
It can be deduced from (3) that resistance depends only on pression [24]:
geometry and electrical conductivity.
In general, it is more advisable to calculate resistance (3)
(7)
starting from dissipated power, by means of the following ex-
pression:
Fig. 3. Resistance R .
TABLE II
STEP VOLTAGES
(8)