Transients – Line Disturbances

http://electrical- engineering- portal.com/transients- line- disturbances January 22, 2013

Lightning strikes and switching transients on

power lines will propagate down the line and
eventually arrive at a substation. There, the
voltage will be clamped by lightning arresters to
a level the substation equipment can handle
without damage. This voltage will be passed on
to the distribution lines in two f orms: dif f erential
and common modes. The dif f erential-mode
voltage is the voltage between the power line
conductors themselves, and it does not directly
involve voltages to ground. The common-mode
voltages are the voltages of the several
conductors to ground.

Dif f erential-mode voltages are passed directly through transf ormers and appear on the
secondaries as transf ormed by the turns ratio. Some attenuation may result f rom
intrawinding capacitances, but interwinding capacitances may actually increase the
voltage.

Common-mode voltages are transf erred to the secondary through the interwinding
capacitances and can be ef f ectively stopped by an electrostatic shield between the
windings. Absent the shield, however, they can appear on the secondaries with a
magnitude close to that on the primary.

This can be a severe problem on medium-voltage systems where there is the possibility
of 10 kV or more being developed on secondaries to ground. The best protection f rom
line-induced transients of all types on secondaries is a set of MOVs.

Line-to-line MOVs on the secondary are best f or dif f erential-mode voltages, and line-to-
ground MOVs will provide the best protection f rom common-mode voltages if a shield is
not used.

An electrostatic shield (Faraday screen) is a relatively lowcost addition to a transf ormer,

and it is a good practice to specif y a shield on transf ormers with medium-voltage
primaries. With a shield, line-to-line MOVs are likely to provide suf f icient transient
protection.

Dry-type transformers should be equipped with at least distribution-class lightning

arresters on medium-voltage circuits.

SOURCE: Power Electronics Design – A Practitioner’s Guide