SIZING NEUTRAL GROUNDING RESISTOR

Compiled from Electrical4u, My Tech Info, ETechnoG website

By Ir. Tan Yoke Lee
MIEM, Mi-FIRE E
yokeleetan71@gmail.com
SOLID GROUNDING
Solid grounding is used when system voltage on the
secondary side is less than 1kV or more than 15kV. It is
suitable to be used in system with high impedance.

The neutral point of the system is directly connected to the

ground system using large conductors with negligible
resistance and thus is held at constant ground voltage at all
conditions during normal and fault.

During fault, the faulty phase voltage goes to zero while the
remaining phase voltages remain.

The heavy fault current IF nullifies the effect of the

capacitive current IR + IY AT THE FAULT LOCATION and thus
prevents ground arching and overvoltage.

However, solid grounding allows large fault current to flow

through and can burn the contact of circuit breakers.
SIZING NEUTRAL GROUNDING RESISTOR

• The Short form of NGR is Neutral Grounding

Resistor.
• NGRs are used in an electrical power system
to protect the star connected
alternator/generator or the transformer.
• NGR is constructed by inserting a resistor
between the star connected neutral terminal
and ground terminal.
• NGR is used to limit the fault current in a
generator or a transformer during earth
faults. This is normally used when the
voltage of the generator set or secondary
voltage of transformer is of magnitude
3.3/6.6/11/ 15kV.
• It becomes quite expensive to implement
beyond 15kV as the resistor becomes more
expensive.
SIZING NEUTRAL GROUNDING RESISTOR

• The fault current is normally limited to be between

200Amps to 400Amps as earth fault relay can detect
from 5% up to 20% of fault current.

• The Resistor is generally rated for 10 seconds with a

maximum temperature rise of 760 °C.

• Resistor = Vphase/ Ifault, where Vphase is voltage

between phase and neutral.

• For 11kV system, resistor = 11 x 1000/ (1.73x 400)

ohm = 16ohm.