Evaluation of Transient Response of Different Earthing Configurations due to Lightning Impulses

Abstract

Earthing system is very important in order to protect the electrical equipment as well as the human’s safety against over voltages. The main function of the earthling system is to remove unwanted excessive electrical currents caused by unusual conditions such as fault and lightning or switching over voltages by providing a low resistance path to the earth. Researchers had studied the behaviour of the earthling system to improve its performance for the past few years. There are few factors that influence the performance of the earthling system such as soil resistivity and soil ionization which need to be focused in order to improve the earthling. Thus, this paper evaluates on the factors that affect the behaviour of the earthling system based on simulation works using MATLAB and Safe Grid Software. Some analytical calculations are used to obtain the soil resistivity and resistance as well as the touch and step voltages. The simulation results were validated based on comparison with other studies on the factors that influence the earthling system performance. The results reveal that the variation of soil resistivity, the configuration of electrodes, current magnitude and frequency dependence can result in a change of transient response of the systems.