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DESIGN OF GROUNDING SYSTEM FOR GIS INDOOR SUBSTATION


Tosak Thasananutariya Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA), Thailand Knathip Spuntupong Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA), Thailand Somchai Chatratana National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), Thailand

ABSTRACT The grounding system design for GIS indoor substation is proposed in this paper. The design concept of equipotential ground grids in substation building as well as connection of GIS enclosures to main ground grid is described. The main ground grid design is performed according to IEEE Std. 80-2000. The real case study of grounding system design for 120 MVA, 69-24 kV distribution substation in MEAs power system is demonstrated. Index Terms Indoor substation design, grounding system, GIS enclosures grounding. 1. INTRODUCTION In recent years, a SF6 gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) indoor substation is adopted by power utilities, particularly the power utility supplies electric power to the urban area. This is because GIS indoor substation can reduce an environment impact, increase safety for people and operators and increase reliability. Due to very high cost of land, it is extremely difficult to acquire a large piece of land for constructing the conventional air-insulated outdoor substation (AIS) in urban area. The design of grounding system for GIS indoor substation is different from conventional AIS. GIS indoor substation normally occupies only 10-25% of the land required for conventional AIS [1]-[3]. Therefore, the grounded area of GIS indoor substation is also reduced. Furthermore, the grounding system of the building in GIS indoor substation has to be taken into account, especially the working area of technicians and operators. This paper proposes the design of grounding system for GIS indoor substation according to IEEE Std. 80-2000. Other considerations of grounding systems in GIS building to meet safe grounding design objectives will be described. 2. SUBSTATION GROUNDING SYSTEMS DESIGN CONCEPT The two major design goals of any substation grounding system under normal and fault conditions are as follows [1]: To provide means to dissipate electric currents into the earth without exceeding any operating and equipment limits. To assure that persons in the vicinity of grounded facilities are not exposed to the danger of critical electric shock. Typically, the grounding system of GIS indoor substation has to be capable to carry power frequency short circuit currents (ground fault currents) as well as high frequency currents from switching and lightning [4]. In addition, the substation grounding system also connects each piece of equipment, structure and the other installation in the substation to ground, in order to provide the means for carrying ground fault currents to the earth. In practice, the design of grounding system for GIS indoor substation can be divided into two parts; 1) design of grounding system in substation building, and 2) design of main ground grid of substation. Fig. 1 shows general layout of GIS indoor substation building and its grounding systems.

CONTROL BOARD 1

CONTROL ROOM

Second Floor
CONTROL CUBICAL

GIS
2

First Floor CABLE ROOM


3

Ground Floor

Fig. 1. Layout of GIS indoor substation. 3. GROUNDING SYSTEM IN SUBSTATION BUILDING The major of grounding system in substation building consists of the ground grids at the floors underneath GIS, control room, and cable room as indicated by number 1, 2 and 3 in Fig. 1 respectively. These ground grids are called equipotential ground grid. The function of equipotential ground grid is to control the potential in floors and walls of reinforced concrete to protect the operators and maintenance personnel from substation potential rise (touch and step voltages) due to ground fault. 3.1 Design of equipotential ground grids The individual items of equipment in indoor substation are normally installed close to each other due to space limitation, so the high density grid is required [3]. Therefore, the equipotential ground grids are arranged with the grid size of 1 x 1 m2, and are

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embedded at least 10 cm under concrete surface throughout the floors of GIS, control and cable rooms, shown in Fig. 2. In order to easily differentiate the equipotential ground grid from the structural steel and to reduce the thickness of concrete floor the galvanized flat steel is employed as ground grid. The galvanized flat steel with the cross-sectional size of 30 mm x 3.5 mm is recommended [4]. In addition, at the exit points from concrete to air, anticorrosion measures must be applied. Two reasons to support the use of flat steel, instead of copper conductor, as equipotential ground grid are: According to electrochemical characteristic of copper and structural steel, accelerated corrosion of structural steel occurs when they are bonded. Replacing copper with galvanized steel can solve the problem of structural steel corrosion [5]. The cost of flat steel is lower than the cost of copper conductor. For example, the material and installation costs of equipotential ground grid for MEA standard distribution substation with RB 12 steel bar is approximately only 25% of the cost of installation with 70 mm2 copper conductor [6]. conductor, and copper bonding between enclosures are recommended to minimize hazardous touch and step voltages within the GIS area [1], [3]. Furthermore, connections should be as short and straight as possible to reduce the impedance at the higher frequencies. The high frequency currents cause local transient potential rise due to the relatively high reactance of conventional ground conditions. For example, the impedance of one meter long straight copper conductor can be approximately 60 at 10 MHz whereas at 50 Hz it would be approximately 0.003 . Therefore, the GIS enclosures should be installed as near as possible to ground level and bending of copper conductor should be avoided, because it can cause high reactance at high frequencies. It is also suggested that the size of copper down conductor should be the same as main ground grid conductor. 4. DESIGN OF MAIN GROUND GRID Normally, the main ground grid is laid under substation building with the depth of 0.5 meter [1] from ground level, as indicated by number 4 in Fig. 1. Its function is to provide a low impedance path for the ground fault current as well as the high frequency current arising from transient enclosure voltage (TEV). TEV can be created by lightning strokes, operation of lightning arresters, line-to-ground faults, and discharges between contacts during switching, mainly disconnector operations. TEV occurs when the fault current flows in the grounding system and charges the stray capacitance of the GIS installation. TEV has very short rise time of 3 to 20 ns, but is only sustained for 20-30 ms at the most [3]. Typically, design of main ground grid for GIS indoor substation is the same as for AIS, because the power frequency criteria are still predominated [3]. The process of main ground grid design can also be divided into two stages, namely preliminary parameters collection and main ground grid design stages. The detail of each stage is described below: 4.1 Preliminary parameters collection The preliminary parameters should be collected to be used as inputs of the computer program for main ground grid design. These parameters compose of [1]: 1) Maximum ground fault current at substation buses. Either actual or upper limit of ground fault current can be selected depend on design criteria of each utility. For conservative design, the upper limit of ground fault current in the power system is recommended. 2) Fault duration (tf) and shock duration (ts). Fault duration and shock duration are normally assumed equal. The choices tf and ts should result in the most pessimistic combination of fault current decrement factor and allowable current. Typical values for tf and ts range from 0.25 s to 1.0 s. 3) Soil resistivity ( ). The grid resistance and voltage gradients within a substation are directly dependent on the soil resistivity. In fact, the soil resistivity varies with horizontal and vertical distances,

Second Floor

First Floor

Ground Floor

Fig. 2. Layout of equipotential ground grids. The additional recommendation for installation the equipotential ground grid is as follow: In order to avoid problems of overheating and damage of the steel reinforced structure due to excessive circulating current, the use of structural steel reinforced concrete as the equipotential ground grid is not recommended [2]. 3.2 Connection of equipotential ground grids to main ground grid Each equipotential ground grid shall be directly connected to main ground grid with 70 mm2 down steel conductor along the columns of substation building as many points as possible. Moreover, the down steel conductor shall be bonded with reinforced structure in order to reduce the side flashover to the columns of substation building during the ground fault current flows through the down steel conductor. 3.3 Connection of GIS enclosure to main ground grid Frequent connection of the GIS enclosures and the phase enclosures to the main ground grid with copper

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so sufficient data have to be measured in substation yard. The Wenner four-pin method is widely applied. 4) Resistivity of surface layer ( s). A layer of surface material helps limit the body current by adding resistance to the equivalent body resistance. For GIS indoor substation, the surface layer is concrete. Typical resistivity of concrete in wet condition ranges from 21 m to 100 m. 5) Grid geometry. Generally, the limitation on the physical parameters of a ground grid is based on economics and the physical limitations of the installation of the grid. Typical conductor spacing range from 3 m to 15 m, while typical grid depths range from 0.5 m to 1.5 m. 4.2 Main ground grid design procedure Following the procedures given in reference [1], the main grid conductor size, the tolerable touch and step voltages, ground potential rise (GPR), can be determined. The satisfaction design is reached when the GPR is less than tolerable touch voltage. If this is not the case, then the mesh and step voltages are calculated and compared with the tolerable touch and step voltages respectively. If the mesh voltage is less than the tolerable touch voltage and the step voltage is less than the tolerable step voltage, then the design parameters are accepted for implementation. On the other hand, if any or both conditions are not satisfied, the spacing between parallel conductors, total length of grid conductor, total effective length of grounding system conductor, including grid and ground rods or geometric factor have to be modified, and the calculation and comparison processes are repeated. The major equations used to calculate the design parameters are given below: Etouch50 = tolerable touch voltage for human with 50 kg body weight, V = surface layer resistivity, m s ts = duration of shock for determining allowable body current, s = soil resistivity, m Rg = resistance of grounding system, GPR = ground potential rise, V IG = maximum grid current that flows between ground grid and surrounding earth, A Km = spacing factor for mesh voltage Ki = correction factor for grid geometry Lm = effective length of Lc + LR for mesh voltage, m Ks = spacing factor for step voltage Ls = effective length of Lc + LR for step voltage Em = mesh voltage, V = step voltage, V Es 5. CASE STUDY: DESIGN OF MAIN GROUNG GRID An old outdoor substation was replaced by the new indoor substation which is equipped with 2 x 60 MVA, 69-24 kV power transformers and 72.5 kV GIS, as shown in Fig.3.

A kcmil = IK f t c

E step50 = 1000 +6Cs s


E touch 50 = 1000+1.5Cs s

(1)

(a)

0.157 ts

0.116 ts

(2)

(3) (b) (4) (5) (6) Fig. 3. Indoor substation. (a) 72.5 kV double buses GIS. (b) 36/48/60 MVA, 69-24 kV power transformers. 5.1 Design data The preliminary parameters input into developed computer program are as follows: Maximum ground fault current at HV bus: 40 kA Current division factor Sf: 0.90 Fault duration tf : 1.0 s Soil resistivity : 3.757 m (soil measurement and [7]) Concrete resistivity wet s: 100 m Thickness of concrete surfacing hs: 0.15 m Depth of grid burial h: 0.5 m Available grounding area A: 42 m x 34 m Spacing of grid conductor along x-axis: 3.0 m Spacing of grid conductor along y-axis: 2.5 m

GPR = I G R g
Em

Es =

K sK iIG Ls

Km Ki IG Lm

where: Akcmil = area of ground conductor, kcmil I = rms fault current, A tc = duration of fault current for sizing ground conductor, s CS = surface layer derating factor = material constant value Kf Estep50 = tolerable step voltage for human with 50 kg body weight, V

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5.2 Design results The design was performed with three cases, as follows: Case I: Design main ground grid without ground rod. The design result of this case does not meet design criteria due to the GPR, mesh and step voltages are greater than tolerable touch and step voltages respectively. Case II: Design main ground grid with 50 ground rods. The design result of this case also does not meet design criteria due to the GPR and mesh voltage are greater than tolerable touch voltage. Case III: Design main ground grid with 130 ground rods. The design result of this case meets design criteria due to both mesh and step voltages are less than tolerable touch and step voltages. The comparison of the mesh and step voltages with tolerable touch and step voltages for a person with body weight of 50 kg for three cases mentioned above is shown in Fig. 4. It is apparent that the mesh and step voltages of Case I are more than the tolerable touch and step voltages. After adding 50 ground rods to the main ground grid in Case II, the mesh voltage is lower than the touch voltage but the step voltage is higher than the tolerable step voltage. Thus, the main ground grid designs in Case I and II do not meet design criteria. However, if 130 ground rods are added to main ground grid (Case III), both mesh and step voltages (99.66 V and 168.24 V) are lower than tolerable touch and step voltages (129.54 V and 170.14 V). Therefore, detail design of Case III will be adopted for installing the main ground grid.
Table I Design parameters of Case III Items Results *** Ground Grid Conductors ***
Copper, commercial hard-drawn Cross-section area 150 mm2 130

*** Ground Rods ***


Total number of ground rods @ 5/8 in diameter x 10 ft

*** Tolerable Voltages ***


Etouch for body weight of 50 kg Estep for body weight of 50 kg 129.54 V 170.14 V 1030 m 396.24 m 1426.24 m 0.0459 1664.63 V 99.66 V 168.24 V

*** Output Parameters ***


Total length of ground grid conductor, Lc Total length of ground rod, LR Total length of grounding system conductor, LT Substation ground resistance, Rg Ground Potential Rise, GPR Mesh voltage, Em Step voltage, Es

300 250 Volts 200 150 100 50 0 Case I


Mesh voltage

The design of grounding system in substation building, including equipotential ground grids design and GIS enclosures grounding, particularly the effect of high frequency current flowing through the grounding system should be carefully taken into account. To avoid the impedance at high frequencies, the connection of GIS enclosures to main ground grid shall be as short and straight as possible. Generally, the design of main ground grid for GIS indoor substation can be done in the same way of AIS. The design will meet design criteria when the GPR is lesser than tolerable touch voltage, otherwise, the mesh and step voltages must be less than tolerable touch and step voltages. However, due to the limitation of grounded area in GIS indoor substation, reduction of the mesh and step voltages can only be achieved by the addition of ground rods to main ground grid. 7. REFERENCES

Case II
Step voltage Etouch50

Case III
Estep50

Fig. 4. Comparison of the mesh and step voltages with tolerable voltages. 5.3 Detail of design parameters The main ground grid of this substation was installed with the designed parameters in Case III. Table I shows the output of designed parameters from developed computer program. 6. CONCLUSION The design of grounding system for GIS indoor substation composes of two components, namely design of grounding system in substation building and main ground grid.

[1] IEEE Guide for Safety in AC Substation Grounding, IEEE Standard 80-2000, Jan. 2000. [2] Terry Irwin and J.Lopez-Roldan Substation Earthing: Special Consideration for GIS Substation, IEE Seminar on Published: 2000, pp.5/1-5/5. [3] John Lewis of CIGRE Working Group 23.10 (Metalclad Substations), Earthing of GIS An Application Guide, Electra no.151, Dec. 1993. [4] Heinrich E. Remde, Design Guideline for Earthing Systems in Substation Buildings, Especially with GasInsulated Switchgear (GIS), ABB Schaltanlagen, Mannheim, Aug. 1993. [5] Bernhard Boehle et al., Switchgear Manual, Asea Brown Boveri, Eighth edition, 1988. [6] Knathip Spuntupong et al., Study and Development of MEAs Grounding System Project, Metropolitan Electricity Authority, Tech. Rep., Sep. 2002. [7] Baldev Thapar, Victor Gerez, Equivalent Resistivity of Non-Uniform Soil for Grounding Gird Design, IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, Vol.10, No.2, Apr. 1995, pp.759-767.

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