Calculation of overvoltage on nearby underground metal pipeline due to the lightning strike on UHV AC transmission line tower

Abstract

Making use of EMTP, the transient simulation of the currents along the towers and ground wires is performed when the lightning strikes the tower of the power transmission line. The investigation shows that the currents along the towers and ground wires dramatically decrease and can be ignored after 5 spans. And the effect on them for different impulse ground impedances, lightning current injection locations, tower spans, lightning wave impedances and so on are obtained when lightning strike on tower. With the help of Fourier transform, the method of moment is adopted to calculate the transient coating stress voltage of the pipeline and total electric field in the earth when the underground pipeline runs parallel to or crosses the power transmission line. The approximate formulas of the maximum coating stress voltage along the pipeline are proposed for the situation of crossing, which involve the lightning current, soil resistivity, pipeline models, tower grounding structure sizes and separation distance between the pipeline and tower grounding structure. Then, the proposed method can be used to evaluate the safety distance between the pipeline and tower grounding structure with the lightning electrical strength of the anti-corrosion coating of the pipeline. Eventually, if actual distance is less than the calculated value, modeling and analysis of protection measures in the pipeline can be carried out to protect the coating.