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1. Grounding or Earthing Scheme in DCS or PLC Systems
1. Grounding or Earthing Scheme in DCS or PLC Systems
Whenever the DCS or PLC systems are grounded, they still not connected to the earth. The system has a
ground bus bar inside located at an appropriate place to which all internal grounding connection is
returned. Once the final ground bus bar is connected to an actual-earth pit or earth grid that the system
finally earthed.
Improper earthing or grounding of Distributed Control System (DCS) or Programmable Logic Controller
(PLC) may result in either mal-operation of the control system or a controller or failure of electronic cards or
sometimes even embedded software gets erased.
In the case of DCS or PLC each cubicle is having a ground bus bar to which the controller chassis, shields
can be connected. These bus bars are then returned to a final ground bus bar from where the connection is
then taken to earth pit or earth grid.
The earth pit must have a small earth resistance ( much less than 1 ohm). usually, the earth resistance can
be measured by a three probe method.
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Types
There are four layers required for the correct and effective grounding and earthing
It should be noted that the enclosure earthing minimized the results of Electromagnetic interference.
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It is where the incoming power supply isolation transformer secondary is grounded along with ground
connection obtained from Isolation common ground reference(G2). This control system ground is
considered as the final earth pit for that location. It can be terminated on the dedicated plant earth Grid
(G4).
The control system ground (G3) or the final earth pit connected to the local control systems should be
separate earth pit. Which then can be connected to a dedicated plant earth system. This control system G3
should not be shared with other plant systems.
The cable used for grounding should be in green with yellow marks.
The ground bus bars to be used should be copper bus bars with approximately 10 mm as the thickness
and 50 mm in width.
Reference: David Brown, David Harrold, and Roger Hope,” Control Engineering: Control system power
and grounding better practice,”
Interest to add any further points? Share with us through below comments section.
Author: R.Jagan
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