Transient overvoltage analysis in the medium voltage substations based on full-wave modeling of two-layer grounding system

Abstract

In this paper, a comprehensive investigation of substation grounding soil structure effects on switching/lightning transients is presented. The full-wave computational solution Method of Moments (MoM) is adopted to solve Maxwell’s equations. The significant advantage of this technique is its ability to deal effectively with substation grounding systems (SGSs) at high frequency. This evaluation is carried out considering two soil structures: (1) a uniform soil and (2) soil with a layered structure. The impacts of both soil structures on the peak transient overvoltage values are compared. To begin with, the harmonic impedance matrix (HIM) of the layered multi-terminal SGS is computed. Then, a vector fitting approach is employed to incorporate the accurate SGS behavior by relying on the obtained HIM into time domain simulations. Finally, the transient overvoltages and maximum ground potential rise (GPR) are computed. The chief contribution of this paper is the transient assessment of the two-layer multi-terminal soil structure of the large SGS taking into account the frequency dependence model of the electrical parameters of soil, which is not generally investigated and instead, treated simplistically. According to the results of the study, the lack of an exact grounding system models may lead to underestimations/overestimations of the GPR and the overvoltage values. The results demonstrate the need for the grounding modeling of SGS considering layered soil structure to be incorporated into power system transient analysis in a wide range of frequencies.