AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES POWER ENGINEERING CONFERENCE (AUPEC), 2015
Earth grid safety criteria determination with the
standards IEEE-80 and IEC-60479 and optimization
of installation depth
Amit Jyoti Datta, Member, IEEE, Richard Taylor, Member, IEEE, and Gerard Ledwich, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Major generating or switching stations are normally
operated with their neutral points directly earthed (usually an
earth grid is buried in the earth). Metallic structures in the yard
of generating or switching station, are electrically connected to the
earth grid. The dimensions of earth grids are usually up to some
hundreds of meters on a side. The design of earthing systems
requires a worst-case approach. It ensures that a conductor
forming the grid will not fail thermally or mechanically in the
worst case of maximum fault current persisting for a fault of
maximum duration. Over the life time of the electrical substation
and its associated earth grid (30-50 years), it is important
to maintain safety. Therefore before installing an earth grid
its design is assessed according to the earth grid installation
standards. In this paper safety criteria assessment of a design
is evaluated with both IEEE-80 and IEC- 60479. In addition, a
new method for determining the earth grid’s installation depth
has been proposed. It is based upon the soil model of particular
substation instead of installing it in 0.5 meters depth for any
substation.
Keywords—Earth grid, Soil resistivity, Touch potential, Step
potential, earth potential rise, ventricular fibrillation
I. I NTRODUCTION
A N earthing system design based upon minimizing the
overall grid resistance will not always guarantee safety
over the earth grid lifetime. The flow of earth current during
the fault or lightning conditions results in a rise of the earth
grid potential with respect to a physically remote earth point.
This rise of earth grid potential can lead to unsafe conditions
for personnel and connected electrical plant. The standard [1]
specifies that the maximum current flowing through a person
(the shock current) should not exceed 100mA.
Present day design considerations are:
• To ensure that accessible non-current-carrying
metallic structures and equipment do not carry any
hazardous potential during normal operating condi-
tion
• Touch voltage and step voltage are below the safety
limit during the fault conditions
Amit Jyoti Datta is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science School (EECS), Queensland University of Technology,
Australia, e-mail: (amit.jyoti.datta@gmail.com)
Richard Taylor and Gerard ledwich are also with EECS, Queensland
University of Technology, Australia.
Manuscript received May 15, 2015.
978-1-4799-8725-2/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
1
• A common earthing point is provided to facilitate
the hazardous potential to dissipate to the ground
• To withstand the fault conditions over the designed
lifetime of the power system despite any additions
or modifications [2].
An earth grid has to mitigate the fault conditions,
and the lighting strikes to safeguard the people in the
vicinity over the designed lifetime. Subsequently during
the design process safety criterias are analyzed and verified
with the standards IEEE 80 and IEC 60479 using different
software packages. In this article, a comparison in between
safety condition determination with IEEE 80 and IEC 60479
using CDEGS has been presented. Moving away from the
conventional practice of installing an earth grid at 0.5 metres
depth, a new method to determine the earth grid installation
depth based upon the soil model has been proposed. It
is expected that this approach will enhance the long-term
performance of the earthy grid.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: In
section II a comparison in between the two standards of the
earth grid design is presented based upon CDEGS simulations.
Section III describes a unique method to determine earth grid
installation depth based upon the soil model.
II. C OMPARISON OF THE STANDARDS IEEE-80 AND
IEC-60479 IN DETERMINING SAFETY CRITERIA FOR
EARTH GRID DESIGN
A. Hazardous Voltages During Earth Faults
Power system earth fault, encroachment of urban built
environment may contribute to an earth potential rise inside
and outside the substation fence. For a 40 kA earth fault, earth
potential rise of an earth grid with four meshes, dimensions
of 30 metres by 30 metres has been projected in the figure 1.
An earth grid is designed to protect the human and electrical
apparatus even at the occurrence of possible maximum earth
potential rise due to any fault incident. Several articles have
reported that designing the earth grid only with the aid of IEEE
80 will not completely ensure safety [3], [4], [5].
B. Comparison of IEEE and IEC safety criteria
IEEE 80 provides a risk-based approach for assessing the
earth grid design while IEC 60479 comprises of a deterministic
approach [6]. The method for establishing the safety criteria
with IEC 60479 is like as follows:
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES POWER ENGINEERING CONFERENCE (AUPEC), 2015 2

TABLE I. E XPLANATION TO THE FIGURE 2

Zones Boundaries Physiological effects

AC-1, up-to No injurious physiological effect

AC-2 curve b
Strong involuntary muscular contractions. Difficulty
in breathing. Reversible cardiogenic shock, vesuvegal
AC-3 Curve b
shock immobilization may also occur. Usually no
and above
health damage is expected
Cardiac malfunction may occur. Probability
AC-4 Above of ventricular fibrillation increases with current
curve c1 magnitude and time.
AC-4.1 Probability of ventricular fibrillation increasing
AC-4 c1 − c2
upto 5%
AC-4.2 Probability of ventricular fibrillation increasing
AC-4 c2 − c3
upto 50%.
AC-4 beyond Probability of ventricular fibrillation above 50%.
curve c3
Fig. 1. Earth potential rise for 30x30m earth grid (installation depth=0.5
m, top soil layer resistivity=1000 ohm-m, bottom soil layer resistivity=100
ohm-m. fault current=1000 A).

Fig. 3. IEEE and IEC allowable touch voltage curves comparison (top soil
layer resistivity 100 ohm-m and top layer- soil resistivity 100 ohm-m)

Fig. 2. Permissible body current versus duration curve [7]

TABLE II. S UMMARY OF FIGURE 3
Topics Observations about allowable touch voltages
Gradual decreasing of allowable touch voltage
• From figure 2 the value of permissible body current IEEE
for increased fault clearing time.
is determined. This calculation is done for a spe- Trendline for 70 kg body mass is higher than the
one for 50 kg body mass.
cific fault clearing time. Probability of ventricular IEC c3 would be the more conservative approach
fibrillation is assumed in this case. IEC
as it allows higher touch voltage.
• Using the standard tables corresponding body resis- Fault clearing Allowable touch voltage remains almost the same for
tance is determined. time >1 sec-
• Then foot resistance is calculated with the IEEE80 ond
each methods
standard. Fault clearing Differences between methods are much greater.
• Then finally the touch and step voltages are com- time <0.1
puted. second
The following sections provide a comparison between the
Standards. Basis of the comparison of the standards is different
in each case. In each curve, CDEGS [8] simulation was run 2) Comparison in terms of body resistance: IEEE-80
for finding the coordinate of each points. With these generated defines the safety criteria for 50 kg and 70 kg body mass. On
data, the following curves are generated using MATLAB. the other hand, in IEC 60479 the standard body impedances
1) Comparison in terms of allowable touch voltage: Fault are given for the 5th , 50th and 95th percentiles rank of the
clearing time was varied for the earth grid system described population surveyed. This population consists of the dry,
in article II-A. It was done for the IEEE standard with 50kg water wet and salt water wet conditions. For this simulation
and 70 kg body mass model, IEC c1, c2, c3 model with 50th top soil layer resistivity was set to 100 ohm-m. The body
percentiles rank of the population surveyed. The Change of impedance values for IEC c3 is the lowest. It is the most
allowable touch voltage was observed with the change of the conservative from the safety perspective. Because it results in
models (figure 3). The results are summarized in table II. a higher current value through the body. Figure 4 shows a
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES POWER ENGINEERING CONFERENCE (AUPEC), 2015 3

TABLE IV. S UMMARY OF FIGURE 5

comparison of the values for the body impedance used by both
the Standards and table III summarizes the understandings
Topics Observations about allowable step voltages
from the figure.
The almost similar trend to figure 3 was observed but
the allowable thresholds are little higher.
General
It is because the possibility of fibrillation for step voltage
is lower in comparison to the touch voltage.

4) Comparison in terms of surface layer resistivity: In

order to reduce the probability of ventricular fibrillation
during an incident of earth fault or the lightning strike, an
earth mat or an imported layer of surface material is spread
in a substation. Crushed or washed granite, asphalt, concrete
are the typically used surface layer. These surface layers
provide a greater level of protection by increasing the contact
resistance between a person’s feet and the earth. The added
surface layer can reduce the body current and hence minimize
Fig. 4. Body resistance curves
the touch and step potential hazard. During earth grid design
according to the design requirement the thickness of the
surface material is varied. Figure 6 shows the allowable touch
voltages for varying the surface material resistivity from 100
TABLE III. S UMMARY OF FIGURE 4
ohm-m to 10,000 ohm-m and the results show that IEC c3
model with 50th percentiles will be the safest approach for
Topics Observations about body impedance
IEEE Fixed impedance of 1000 ohm verifying design specifications(table V).
Variable body impedance value, low value
of body impedance at low fault clearing time.
IEC two different impedance value for low and high
fault clearing time, transition of resistance value occurs
at around 0.4 seconds.
Fault clearing Body impedance value for IEC method is smaller than IEEE
time >1 sec-
ond
Fault clearing Body impedance for IEC 60479 is still smaller than IEEE 80
time <0.1
second

3) Comparison of allowable step voltages curves: The

allowable step voltages were calulated for the different fault
clearing times varying from 0.01 to 10 seconds and then
plotted in figure 5. For this simulation top soil layer resistivity
was set to 100 ohm-m. The observations from this figure is Fig. 6. Allowable touch voltages for varying surface material resistivity (top-
summarized in table IV. layer soil resistivity 100 ohm-m, surface layer depth 0.15 m, fault clearing time
0.3 s)

TABLE V. S UMMARY OF FIGURE 6

Topics Observations about varying surface material resistivity

Allowable touch voltages increases with increased
surface layer resistivity.
General IEC c3 model with 50th percentiles
will be the safest approach for verifying design
specifications.

5) Comparison in terms of surface layer depth: The depth

of the earth mat was varied from 0.01 to 0.3 m (figure 7) to
Fig. 5. Allowable step voltages curves
observe its impact on the allowable touch voltages and the
understandings from the figure is presented in table VI. For
this study, surface layer resistivity is set at 3000 ohm-m.
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES POWER ENGINEERING CONFERENCE (AUPEC), 2015 4

In general, the nature of the function is not simple. Conse-

quently, the interpretation of the measurements will consist of
establishing a simple equivalent function of z. It gives the best
approximation [9]. The equation developed by Schwarz [10]
for horizontal buried conductors is as follows:
ρ 2L K1 L
RG = [ln + √ − K2 ] (2)
πL h A
RG = Resistance of the electrode system
ρ= Resistivity of the soil layer in which the grid is buried
h= depth of burial
L= Total length of grid conductor
Fig. 7. Permissible touch voltages for different surface layer depth (earth A= Grid area
mat resistivity 3000 ohm-m, top-layer soil resistivity 100 ohm-m, fault clearing K1 , K2 = Grid geometry related constant
time 0.3 s)

TABLE VI. S UMMARY OF FIGURE 7 B. Simulation-based illustration

1) For model A: Assumptions for model A are stated in the
Topics Observations about varying surface layer depth
Allowable touch voltage increases with greater surface
table VII. The grid is placed at lower depth progressively. With
layer depth. After 0.15 metres of depth respect to the grid at 0.1 meter the resistance of the electrode
General the allowable touch volatge magnitude remains almost system reduces with increased depth. Overall the resistance
the same. Subsequently, 0.15 could be set up as the standard depth of the electrode system is a function of both individual layer
of surface layer material.
resistivity and the respective layer (figure 8).
TABLE VII. S OIL RESISTIVITY PROFILE MODEL A
C. Overall recommendations based on the analysis in sec- Layer Resistivity (Ωm) Thickness (m)
tion II 1 2000 3
2 100 3
Though the different standards are based on different as- 3 1000 ∞
sumptions but the purpose is the same; i.e., to ensure a safe
design of the earth grid. The above case study sets out the
importance of evaluating an earth grid design with both the
standards to confirm mitigation of the hazards in the substation
for any earth fault incident or lightning strike. There was
a significant difference in between the allowable voltages
determined by the different standards and it varied over the
fault clearing time. Safety limit curves can be utilized to
identify any potential hazard in the design, and a conservative
approach should be taken. A mixed use of the both standards
IEEE 80 and IEC 60479 is recommended for evaluating the
safety of an earth grid design. It was found in the case study Fig. 8. Relation between z and RG for model A simulated in CDEGS
that IEC 60479 was the conservative approach in most of
the cases but in some cases IEEE 70 kg model was the
conservative one. Subsequently, an earth grid designer will get 2) For model B: Model B is described in the table VIII.
more flexibility in developing a robust and safe design if both The grid is placed at lower depth progressively. With respect
the standards are utilized in assessing the specific design. It can to the grid at 0.1 meter the resistance of the electrode system
be also implemented to avoid overspending and unnecessary reduces with increased depth upto around 3 meter depth. But in
infrastructure setup. the high resistivity area the resistance of the electrode system
increased in a significant amount (figure 9).
III. R ELATION BETWEEN THE DEPTH AND THE
TABLE VIII. S OIL RESISTIVITY PROFILE MODEL B
RESISTANCE OF THE ELECTRODE SYSTEM BURIED IN
GROUND Layer Resistivity (Ωm) Thickness (m)
1 50 3
A. Theoretical illustration 2 1000 3
3 100 ∞
In most cases, the measurement will show that the resistivity
ρ is mainly a function of depth z. For purposes of illustration,
we will assume that this function can be written as follows: The variation of resistance of the electrode system is less
in low soil resistivity soil than the variation in the higher
ρ = f n(z) (1) resistivity soil.
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES POWER ENGINEERING CONFERENCE (AUPEC), 2015 5

Fig. 9. Relation between z and RG for model B simulated in CDEGS

Fig. 11. Relation between z and RG for model D simulated in CDEGS

3) For model C: Model C represents a continuously

decresing soi resistivity earth profile (table IX). The grid
IV. C ONCLUSION
is placed at lower depth progressively. With respect to the
grid at 0.1 meter the resistance of the electrode system From observing the above analysis, it will be easier for a
reduces with increased depth (figure 10). So as deeper the designer to decide the earth grid installation depth for optimum
grid is installed as low the resistance of the electrode system is. performance. It will contribute to a proper use of the conductor
as the depth of the earth grid installation has an impact on
the quantity of copper. Besides, this study can be utilized
TABLE IX. S OIL RESISTIVITY PROFILE MODEL C to evaluate the impact of any change in conductor material.
Layer Resistivity (Ωm) Thickness (m) According to the soil profile of the earth grid installation area,
1 1000 2 the designer can select the optimum earth grid installation
2 750 2
3 500 2 depth. Overall, an approach combining both the standards
4 250 2 (IEEE 80 and IEC 60479) will benefit the designer to ensure
5 150 2
6 100 ∞
safety in the vicinity of any substation by optimizing it to any
possible fault situations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Andre Henrion and
Luma Worrall from Powerlink Queensland for their guidance
throughout the project. This project was supported by Power-
link Queensland.

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