Special Feature

High Resistance Grounding…

Is It More Than Just a Big Heater?

by Chris Gingras
Magna Electric Corp.

A
s part of our standard testing and inspection routine during maintenance the upstream ground-fault protection
outages and commissioning, we inspect and test the neutral grounding may trip. This is due to the fact that the
single phase load is now connected in
resistor, commonly referred to as a NGR. A NGR is connected to the series electrically with a relatively large
X0 point or star connection point of a wye-connected transformer. The purpose resistance. Once the load is turned on,
of the NGR is to control the amount of current flow into a ground fault in the the voltage drop across the resistance
is large and the voltage at the single-
event of insulation failure of one of the normally energized conductors to ground. phase load is limited. Next, what is the
When a ground fault occurs the current path back to the source (which in this voltage rating and resistance required
of the NGR? Instances have come
case is the wye connected power transformer) contains a high resistance. In many up where the designer has taken the
cases the ground fault current is limited to 10 amperes or less. When the ground phase-to-phase rating of the system
fault current exceeds a specified pickup point, a NGR monitor or ground-fault and chosen the resistance of the NGR
based on that voltage. While this may
relay is used to alarm the presence of the ground fault, or trip the upstream not seem to be a huge oversight, the
breaker to clear the faulted circuit. The Canadian Electrical Code states that any ground-fault current will not reach the
system rated 5 kV or less that does not serve single-phase loads is permitted to expected value. A system improperly
designed may not detect a ground
sustain a ground fault if the available current is limited to 10 amperes or less and fault. For example, a 4160 volt wye-
an audible or visual alarm is present to enunciate the presence of a ground fault. connected system has a phase-to-
ground voltage of 2400 volts. A proper
When properly applied, a NGR can prevent catastrophic damage to equipment resistance rating for a five ampere
and injury to personnel. NGR is 480 ohms. If the phase-to-
When specifying, designing, or commissioning a system which is to contain phase voltage is used for the resistance
a NGR, a few important items should be considered. First and foremost, is the calculation the NGR would be speci-
system going to service single-phase loads? Secondly, what is the phase-to-ground fied to be 832 ohms. In this case the
voltage rating required for the NGR? This needs to be known in order to properly maximum permissible ground fault
select the required resistance, which is point three. What is the maximum ground current would be 2.9 amperes, which
fault current the system should be designed to handle? may be well below the ground-fault
I have come across errors in each of these design steps during commissioning, alarm or trip setting. If this ground
maintenance, and call outs. First, does the system service single-phase loads? If a fault is left unchecked, it will only be
system services single-phase loads and uses a high-resistance grounding system, a matter of time before another phase
nuisance trips may occur and the single-phase loads will receive lower voltage faults to ground and the system will
than expected. Energized with no load, the single-phase system will appear now have a phase-to-phase fault.
normal. Once load is applied, the voltage at the load will drop considerably and

www.netaworld.org Fall 2008 NETA WORLD 

 Another very commonly missed design and commis- poses a serious personnel and equipment risk, and this is
sioning step when working with high resistance grounded one of the many reasons why the NETA Maintenance
systems is the insulation coordination. Now that we have Testing Specifications should be followed when performing
inserted a high resistance between the X0 bushing and sys- maintenance or acceptance testing.
tem ground, the phase-to-ground voltage on the unfaulted We depend on the proper operation of our electrical
phases may now measure as high as the phase-to-phase systems to provide continuity of service, proper personnel
voltage in the event of a ground fault. This is due to the and equipment protection in the event of system abnormali-
fact that the neutral point voltage is shifted from ground ties, and proper isolation of faulted systems. It is key that
potential by the voltage drop across the grounding resister. grounding systems are inspected and tested on a regular
Since the resister limits ground-fault current to a low value, basis along with the source transformers.
there is little voltage drop in the faulted phase. Thus, the
faulted phase is at ground potential while the other two
phases remain close to the normal phase-to-phase voltage
raising their voltage to ground to that value. If this system
has surge arresters installed, the maximum continuous op-
erating voltage (MCOV) of the arrester may be exceeded Chris Gingras, Technical Services Manager for Magna Electric
during the ground fault. For example, suppose that a 4160 Corporation in Regina, SK, has 10 years of experience in plant start-up,
commissioning, maintenance, and design of relay protection and control
volt phase-to-phase system has a 100 ampere NGR installed systems rated up to 365 kV. Chris has performed arc-flash hazard as-
on the neutral bushing (X0) of the source transformer. For sessment studies and designed and installed numerous turn key arc-flash
a solidly grounded system, a surge arrester would be chosen mitigation relay systems to protect personnel and equipment from the
which would have a rating in the neighborhood of 10-15 dangers of arc-flash hazards. He is a NETA Certified Level IV Test
percent higher than the phase-to-ground voltage, which in Technician.
this case is 2400 volts. If this arrester were installed on a
system as described previously, the MCOV of the arresters
would be exceeded on the unfaulted phases in the event
of a ground fault. I have come across situations in the past
where a system was changed from a solidly-grounded sys-
tem to a high-resistance grounded system and the surge
arresters were not changed to ones having a higher voltage
rating. When you receive a call out and someone tells you
that they had two of three surge arresters fail in a particular
location, I would first investigate the ratings of the surge
arresters before continuing on the trail for the source of the
problem. The reason for having only two surge arresters fail
is due to the fact that only two phase-to-ground voltages
have exceeded the arrester MCOV rating during a single
phase-to-ground fault.
In a recent maintenance outage we were asked to test
the two main transformers at an industrial plant. Each
transformer was rated for 20 MVA and they were con-
nected in delta on the primary and wye on the secondary
with an NGR on the star point; the NGR’s are rated for 100
amperes. During the routine inspection of the NGR’s, we
noticed that the connection between the transformer and
NGR was no longer made. The crimped lug on the cable
from the NGR was found disconnected from its intended
connection point and hanging loose inside the NGR en-
closure. Not only was the one NGR not connected to the
X0 bushing, but the second transformer which is commonly
paralleled with the first had a broken connection from the
NGR to the main ground grid, which left this NGR floating
from ground as well. In the event of a ground fault in this
case, the ground fault relays would not detect any problem.
The system disturbance would need to advance to the point
of a phase-to-phase fault before any relaying would detect
a problem since there is no path back to the source. This

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