Abstract
The configuration is essential to diagnose the status of the grounding grid, but the orientation of the unknown grounding grid is ultimately required to diagnose its configuration explicitly. This paper presents a transient electromagnetic method (TEM) to determine grounding grid orientation without excavation. Unlike the existing pathological solutions, TEM does not enhance the surrounding electromagnetic environment. A secondary magnetic field as a consequence of induced eddy currents is subjected to inversion calculation. The orientation of the grounding grid is diagnosed from the equivalent resistivity distribution against the circle perimeter. High equivalent resistivity at a point on the circle implies the grounding grid conductor and vice versa. Furthermore, various mesh configurations including the presence of a diagonal branch and unequal mesh spacing are taken into account. Simulations are performed using COMSOL Multiphysics and MATLAB to verify the usefulness of the proposed method.
Highlights
The grounding grid ensures the safety of personnel and power equipment in the substation facility.It provides stable voltages to the equipment without disturbing the continuity of supply
A new method to measure the orientation of the grounding grid was presented
The transmitter-receiver pair of the transient electromagnetic method (TEM) system was moved along a circle above the surface such that the vertical conductor acted as the pole of the circle
Summary
The grounding grid ensures the safety of personnel and power equipment in the substation facility. The grounding grid is a lattice of horizontal bare conductors extending across the entire area of the substation. It is mainly made up of steel, galvanized steel, copper, copper clade steel, etc. In case of a lightning strike, the step and touch voltages are the significant factors to improve the safety of the grounding grid [8,9]. The performance analysis of unknown grounding grids is comprised of the following stages: fault diagnosis, configuration detection, and orientation detection; the former being dependent on the latter. Out of the three stages, orientation detection is the least addressed stage in spite of being very basic to the performance analysis of the unknown grounding grid. The proposed method is validated for different mesh configurations of the grounding grid
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