Effects of Various Earth Grid Configurations on Ground Potential Rise Caused by Lightning Strike

Abstract

Ground Potential Rise (GPR) caused by lightning strike is a potential hazard for electrical equipment inside an oil and gas refinery plant. In order to mitigate the risk, horizontal grounding grid is applied. The best mitigation is to install a grounding grid with mesh size as small as possible. This condition requires a high cost. In order to obtain the optimal mesh size, a series of simulation of a grounding grid with mesh size variations on GPR caused by lightning strike has been carried out. CDEGS software was used to observe the GPR with various mesh size from 6.5 x 6.5 m to 20 x 20 m. Simulation results show that the maximum transient GPR rises as the grounding grid mesh size is increased, while the GPR distribution throughout the grounding grid area does not change much for different mesh sizes. In the other hand, decreasing the grid size would mean that more conductors are required, hence the cost would increase accordingly. The result shows that grid sizes from 6.5 x 6.5 m up to 20 x 20 m have no significant difference in term of GPR. In term of cost, 10 x 10 m does not show significant difference with 20 x 20 m, on the other hand, there is a significant difference for grid sizes 1 x 1 m to 10 x 10 m. From the results, grid sizes between 10 x 10 m up to 20 x 20 m are still applicable as stated in Petronas Technical. To comply with proper GPR value, additional protection devices are needed to protect the electrical equipment from potential damage.Keywords –GPR, grounding grid, mesh size