Railway applications – Fixed Installations –Measuring Methods for Railway Integrated

Earthing System (Working Draft for NWIP of proposed TS by AHG2) 2011

Foreword

The Situation of the measurement for railway earthing and bonding system right now, is that,
- Standards or regulations or norms of measurement methods for very large building structure as
earthing system are used in most countries, but no for railways especially which earthing and bounding
applications are quite different from other industry purposes.
- Different measurement methods have been used in railways for different equipment and subsystems
in some national railways.
- Chinese Ministry of Railway (MOR) have developed the standards used in recent large scale high
speed railways and upgraded railways.
- Series of the IEC 62128 standards will be used in accordance.

Based on the work of AHG2 from Dec., 2009 to May, 2011 dominated by IEC/TC9, the proposed
working draft has been drawn up in to meet the requirements from large scale constructions of
high-speed railway system or powerful EMU locomotives upgraded in existing railway application
with more accurate test in a much lower value of equivalent earthing resistivity and impendence by
practical methods.

Annex of this WD are informative for discussions.

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Railway applications – Fixed Installations –Measuring Methods for Railway Integrated
Earthing System (Working Draft for NWIP of proposed TS by AHG2) 2011

Measurement methods
for railway integrated earthing system

1. Scope

This Technical Specification describes possible methods for measurements of integrated earthing
system in a.c. railways as,
- soil resistivity,
- continuity of electrical interconnection,
- resistance to earth of independent earthing electrodes,
- impendence to earth of railway integrated
- surface-potential gradient, step voltage and touch voltage and
- rail potential and equipment potential of the interconnected return circuit and earthing system.

This Technical Specification does not specify as,

- which measuring methods are compulsory,
- limits to be fulfilled,
- requirements for design, approval and maintenance.

2. Normative references

Those clauses cited from the following referenced documents are the clauses of the specification. For
dated references, all their subsequent modifications (excluding corrected contents) or revised editions
shall not apply to this specification, however, those parties who have entered into an agreement based
on this specification are encouraged to study whether the latest edition of those referenced documents
can be applied. For undated references, the latest edition of the referenced documents applies.
 IEC 61936-1 First edition 2002 Power Installations Exceeding 1 kV a.c. -Part 1: Common
rules
 IEC 62128:2003 Railway applications - Fixed installations - Part 1: Protective provisions
related to electrical safety and earthing
 ANSI/IEEE Std 80-2000, IEEE Guide for Safety in AC Substation Earthing.
 IEEE Std 487-2007, Recommended Practice for the Protection of Wire-Line
Communication Facilities Serving Electric Supply Locations.
 IEEE Std 998-1996, IEEE Guide for Direct Lightning Stroke Shielding of Substations.
 IEEE Std 1410-2004, IEEE Guide for Improving the Lightning Performance of Electric
Power Overhead Distribution Lines.
 IEEE Std 1243-1997, IEEE Guide for Improving the Lightning Performance of
Transmission Lines.
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