First International Power and Energy Coference PECon 2006
November 28-29, 2006, Putrajaya, Malaysia
Surface Potential Calculation for Grounding
Grids
Sherif Ghoneim', Holger Hirsch2, Ahdab Elmorshedy3, Rabah Amer4
l 2Institute of Power Transmission and Storage (ETS), University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
3'4Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University,
'Email:, e;2
Abstract: One of tasks of the grounding systems is
to maintain the voltage rise due to discharging
fault current into grounding grids at the minimum
value to insure the safety of public and personnel.
The objective of the paper is to make a comparison
between the addition of horizontal rods and
vertical rods to the grounding grids to improve the
performance of it. A Boundary Element Approach
uses to get the numerical computation of
grounding system analysis such as the equivalent
resistance and the distribution of potential on the
earth surface due to fault currents. This study
describes the importance of vertical ground rods
not only decrease the grounding grid resistance but
also reduce the step and touch voltages.
Index terms: Grounding grids, Boundary Element
method, Computer methods for grounding
analysis, System protection.
I. INTRODUCTION
A safe grounding design has two main objectives:
* To carry the electric currents into earth under
normal and fault conditions without
exceeding operating and equipment limits or
adversely affecting continuity of service.
* To ensure that the person in the vicinity of
grounded facilities is not exposed to the
danger of electric shock.
The problem under consideration is that the safety
values of the step and touch voltages for the human
that in the vicinity of the grounded facilities [1].
Ground grids are considered an effective solution
for grounding systems for all sites which must be
protected from lightning strokes such as,
telecommunication towers, petroleum fields,
substations and plants. Ground grids produce an equi-
potential surfaces and should provide a very small
impedance but the ground grids are considered
complex arrangement and many research efforts have
been made to explain the performance of grounding
impedance of its under lightning and fault
conditions[2,3]. Vertical ground rods is connected to
the grid to have low values of ground resistance when
the upper layer of soil in which the grid is buried, is of
much higher resistivity than that of the soil beneath.
1-4244-0273-5/06/$20.00 ©2006 IEEE
501
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Egypt
o .; 4rabah amer
The dissipation of the electrical current into the
soil is a well-known phenomenon which equations can
be stated from Maxwell's Electromagnetic Theory [4].
Nevertheless, their application and resolution for the
computing of grounding grids of large installations in
practical cases present some difficulties.
First, no analytical solutions can be obtained for
most of real problems. On the other hand, the
geometry of the grounding grids in main earthing
systems (a mesh of interconnected bare conductors
with a relatively small ratio diameter-length) makes it
very difficult to use standard numerical methods: The
use of techniques commonly applied for solving
boundary value problems in engineering, such as finite
elements or finite differences, is indeed extremely
costly since the discretization of the domain (the
ground excluding the electrode) is required. Therefore,
obtaining sufficiently accurate results should imply
unacceptable computing efforts in memory storage
and CPU time.
In the last decades, some intuitive techniques for
grounding grid analysis such as the Average Potential
Method (APM) have been developed. A new
Boundary Element Approach has been recently
presented [4-6] that includes the above mentioned
intuitive techniques as particular cases. In this kind of
formulation the unknown quantity is the leakage
current density, while the potential at an arbitrary
point and the equivalent resistance for grounding grids
must be computed subsequently.
Studying the effect of vertical grounding rods that
add to the grounding grid on earth surface potential
(ESP) is investigated in this paper. This study
describes the importance of vertical grounding rods
not only decrease the grounding grid resistance but
also reduce the step and touch voltages.
II. METHOD OF CALCULATION
The results in this paper are produced by the
techniques that have been implemented in a computer
aided design (CAD) system for grounding grids of
electrical substations called TOTBEM [4]. The
problem focused in this paper is which the best, the
addition of vertical rods to the grounding grids or
horizontal rods to get the best performance of
grounding grids.
The characteristics of the grid are 1OxI0 m2, the
radius of the grid conductor ( r ) is 5 mm, the length of
vertical rods ( Lvr ) is (land 2m), its radius of ( r, ) is
(5 and 8 mm) , the grid depth (h) is 0.5 m, the

resistivity of the soil (p) is 100 Q.m, and the total
ground potential rise (GPR) is defined as 1. The
grounding resistance has two components: the
dissipation resistance which is the resistance of the
ground between the ground electrode and reference
ground and the resistance of the metal parts of the
ground electrode and the grounding conductor. The
last resistance is usually much smaller than the
dissipation resistance, then the ground resistance is
equal to the dissipation resistance only.
If
-Vg= GP
Fig. 1. Illustration of the grounding system (Vg is the
ground potential rise (GPR), If is the fault current, Vt
is the touch voltage, Vs is the step voltage and h is the
burial depth of the grid).
if
(c) ~~~~~~~(d)
Fig. 2. Different configurations of grids. (a) 4 meshes.
(b) 16 meshes. (c) 36 meshes. (d) 4 meshes with
vertical rods.
III. COMPUTATION RESULTS
In this section, the 3D graphs explain the earth
surface potential along diagonal profile for the square
grid with different number of meshes.
It is clear that the ground potential rise (GPR) as
well as distribution of the earth surface potential
(ESP) during the current flow in the grounding system
are important parameters for the protection against
electric shock. The distribution of the earth surface
potential helps to determine the step and touch
voltages, which are very important for human safe.
By definition, the touch voltage is the difference
between the ground potential rise (GPR) and the
surface potential at the point where a person is
standing while at the same time having his hands in
contact with a grounded structure, and the mesh
502
voltage is defined as the maximum touch voltage to be
found within a mesh of a ground grid. The maximum
touch voltage is the difference between the GPR and
the lowest potential in the grid boundary [7]. The
maximum percentage value of Vto011h is given by
Vtuh00:::::Vgrid
Vtoucho gri
Vmin
m "o
x 100 (1)
Vgrid
Where, Vgrid is the ground potential rise (GPR), which
equal the equivalent resistance of grid multiplies in the
fault current and Vmin is the minimum surface
potential in the grid boundary.
The step voltage is the difference in surface
potential experienced by a person bridging a distance
of 1 m with his feet without contacting any other
grounded object [7]. Furthermore, the maximum step
voltage of a grid will be the highest value of step
voltages of the grounding grid. The maximum step
voltage can be calculated by using the slope of the
secant line.
Figures 3. a, b and c. illustrate the fact that the
number of meshes has a significant effect in reducing
the touch and step voltage. The surface potential in
case of 36 meshes grid is much flatter than that grid
with 4 and 16 meshes and hence the values of step and
touch voltages are lowest. Also it is shown in figure 4
that an increase in the number of meshes makes the
curve of earth surface potential much flatter and then a
reduction in the grid resistance, touch and step
voltages, also it is seen that the max touch voltage
moves towards the corner mesh in the grid.
I)
.1 4
Fig 3.a. 4 meshes.
.
-
-1.
/,
q00\ . , 1 (t
Fig. 3.b. 16 meshes.
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addition of vertical rods plays an important part to get

the same results and decreases the cost of design.
No of meshes 36 4
I-
F.1 No. of vertical rods 0 9
Vertical rods length (m) 0 2
V, Total grid length (m) 140 78
Resistance (Q) 4.26 4.29
GPR (V) at 100 A 426 429
Max touch voltage 0/, GPR 25.0 31.1
Max touch voltage (V) 106.5 133.419
Max step voltage 00 GPR 16 16

Table 1
Fig. 3.c. 36 meshes.
450 -wthout rods
-wth rods
400
1 Mesh
1 4 Mesh y350
16 Mesh
36 Mesh C.3
.;z 300
u
P- C)
P-. 250-
.ct u
0
5 Iz!.-o 200-
;z
V.
c)
7s
150 -
PsH
v:
44 100
50

-20 -10 0 10 20
-20 -10 0 10 20 Distance from the center of grid (m) "

Distance from the center of grid (m) Diagonal Profile".

"Diagonal Profile".

Fig. 5. Effect of the vertical rods on the earth surface

Fig. 4. Effect of the number of meshes on the earth potential at the same fault current. (16 meshes)
surface potential.

IV. EFFECT OF GROUND RODS 450

Ground rods are one of the most important 400
solutions when the upper layer of the soil in which the
grid is buried, is higher resistivity than that of the
down layer. 4-y
ct ~~~300-
This section discusses the effect of ground rod
characteristics (length and radius of the rod) on earth _ / 'tt250
surface potential. It is clear from figures 5, 6 and 7
that the ground rods cause a reduction in the earth
ci
~~~200
surface potential, moreover the reduction of the grid 150
resistance, but no significant change in the earth ct
surface potential when the ground rod radius 100
-Lvr =2 m
increases.
50 -Lvr =1
The following table 1 explains that an addition of m

ground rods with 2m lengths to the 4 meshes ,,

grounding grid for the case of study gives nearest -20 -10 0 10 20
results when add the horizontal conductors to the same Distance from the center of grid (m) "

grid. The difference in the max touch voltage between
the two cases is 26.919 V but the difference in the
total length of conductors is 62 m as shown from the
table and hence, an increase in the cost of design
occurs when add horizontal rods. Therefore the
Diagonal Profile".
Fig. 6. Effect of the vertical rod length on the earth
surface potential at the same fault current. (16 meshes)
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VII.ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
450 -rvr= 0.008 m The authors gratefully acknowledge the help in
-rvr= 0.005 m the grounding analysis of Prof. Ignasi Colominas from
the Civil Engineering School of the University of La
350
Coruna (Spain).
300
0 250 VIII. REFERENCES
0ta) 200
150 [1] S. Benda, "Earthing and Bonding in Large
100 Installations", ABB Review, No. 5, pp. 22-29,
50 1994.
As [2] R. Verma and D. Mukhedkar, "Fundamental
-20 -10 0 10 20
Considerations and Impulse Impedance of
Ground Grids", IEEE Transaction on Power
Distance from the center of grid (m) "Diagonal Apparatus and Systems, Vol. Pas-100, pp. 2053-
Profile".
2059, March 1981.
[3] F. Menter and L. Gercev, "EMTP-Based Model of
Grounding System Analysis" IEEE Transactions
Fig.7. Effect of the vertical rod radius on the earth on Power Delivery, Vol. 9, pp. 1838-1849, Oct.
surface potential at the same fault current. (16 meshes) 1994.
[4] I. Colominas, F. Navarrina, M. Casteleiro, "A
V. EFFECT OF GRID DEPTH Boundary Element Numerical Approach for
The results explained that the grid depth plays an Earthing Grid Computation", Computer
important role in decreasing the grid resistance and the Methods in Applied Mechanics &
earth surface potential, this fact appears in figure 8. Engineering, vol. 174, pp 73-90, 1990.
[5] I. Colominas, F. Navarrina, M. Casteleiro, "A
Depth 0.5 m
=
Numerical Formulation for Grounding Analysis
450 Depth 0.8 m
= in Stratified Soils", IEEE Transactions on Power
Depth 1 m
=
Delivery, vol. 17, pp 587-595, April 2002.
50- [6] F. Navarrina, I. Colominas, " Why Do Computer
Methods for Grounding Analysis Produce
300 Anomalous Results?," IEEE Transaction on
o ~~~~250- power delivery, vol. 18, No. 4, pp 1192-1201,
o
200 October 2003.
[7] IEEE Std.80, "IEEE Guide for safety in AC
150- substation grounding", New York, 2000.
100
50 IX. BIOGRAPHIES
Sherif Ghoneim (PhD student): Received B.Sc. and
-20 -10 0 10 20 M.Sc. degrees from the Faculty of Engineering at
Distancefrom the center of grid (m) Shoubra, Zagazig University, Egypt, in 1994 and
"diagonal profile". 2000, respectively. Starting from 1996 he was a
teaching staff at the Faculty of Industrial Education,
Suez Canal University, Egypt. Since end of 2005 he is
Fig. 8. Effect of grid depth on the earth surface a guest researcher at the Institute of Energietransport-
potential at the same fault current. (16 meshes) und Speicherung (ETS) of the University of Duisburg-
Essen, under the supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger
VI. CONCLUSIONS Hirsch. His research focuses in the areas of earth
This paper aims to explain the role of the vertical surface potential calculation and improving designs of
ground rods that add to the grounding grid in reducing grounding grids.
the value of grid resistance, step and touch voltages to
a value that is safe for public and human. Additional Holger Hirsch (Prof. Dr.-Ing.): After his PhD from
vertical ground rods gives nearest results to that the University of Dortmund, Germany, he had worked
results when add the horizontal rods to the same grid, as head of EMC Test NRW GmbH, Dortmund,
then the addition of vertical rods to the grounding grid Germany. He became full Professor at the same
gives a good performance and decrease the cost of university in 1998 where he taught theoretical and
design. The grid resistance and ground potential rise practical EMC subjects until 2003. Since beginning
decrease with the increase of the burial depth and 2003 he is the head of the Institute of
number of meshes of the grounding grids. Energietransport- und Speicherung (ETS) of the
University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, where he is
 505

engaged in the teaching, testing and measurement

techniques of EMC and HV systems and equipment.
He is a member of different workgroups of CISPR,
IEC, ETSI and DKE.
Ahdab Elmorshedy (Member IEEE): received the
B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. in 1971, 1974, and 1978
respectively, in Electrical Engineering, from Cairo
University, Egypt. Since 1971, she joined the faculty
of Electrical Engineering at Cairo University, Egypt as
a Teaching staff. During the academic years of 1979
to 1981, she was a research scientist in the Department
of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering at
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. Since
1988 she was a Professor at the Department of
Electrical Engineering, Cairo University. Her research
activities include grounding, protection and safety of
power systems, over-voltage transients, and pollution
of insulators.
Rabah Amer: received the B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. in
1975, 1979, and 1983 respectively, in Electrical
Engineering, from Cairo University, Egypt. Since
1975, he joined the faculty of Electrical Engineering at
Cairo University, Egypt as a Teaching staff. Since
1994 he was a Professor at the Department of
Electrical Engineering, Cairo University. His research
activities include grounding, gas discharge, electric
and magnetic field calculations, prediction of
polluted insulators flashover using laser methods,
lightning protection of petroleum companies, and
overhead transmission line design and commissioning.
Also, he is a consultant for petroleum, industrial and
electrical companies.