Efficient reduction of fault current through the grounding grid of a substation supplied by an overhead line

The paper presents a directly applicable and reasonably accurate method for the evaluation of the effects of the counterpoise, the measure for the reduction of the fault current through the substation grounding grid. Under practical conditions the magnitude of the current diverted from a substation grounding grid by the counterpoise conductor is a very complex function of the self and mutual impedances of overhead and underground conductors, substation grounding impedance, transmission line towers resistance, proximity effect between the grounding grid and the counterpoise conductor, as well as on many other factors of lower order. Therefore certain idealizations and simplification of the real physical model were indispensable to develop the mathematical model presented here. The obtained expressions are mostly based on the general equations of a line represented by its lumped parameters and the general equations of uniform ladder circuits. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.