A new grounding cake to improve the safety performance of grounding systems

Abstract

The safety of a grounding system plays a vital role in the transmission and distribution network for operational safety in the majorıty of electrical installations. The application of residual current and overcurrent protection relays is among the most preferred methods in grounding systems. A novel grounding cake is proposed in this study to investigate safety performance of grounding system. The methodology is meticulously demonstrated through extensive field experiments on natural and chemical grounding enhancement materials. A performance comparison was carried out between natural and chemical enhancement materials under different humidity levels and voltage stresses. Various adjustable voltages in the range between 0.85 and 3.76 kV were applied to three copper rods vertically planted into different grounding materials. The results from the field experiments were analysed using Discrete Wavelet Transform. The experiments demonstrate that natural grounding enhancement materials give low ground resistivity around the electrodes, serve as a cost-effective solution for high resistive soil, and are in conformity with the IEEE 80 safety standards.