MATEC Web of Conferences 59, 02003 (2016) DOI: 10.

1051/ matecconf/20165902003
IC FS T 2016

A New Method of Grounding Grid Design

1 1 2 2
Zhen-Bao Feng , Chun-Sheng Wang , Ji Xia , Lu Wang
1
Jiaozuo Power Supply Company, State Grid Henan Electric Power Company, Jiaozuo, China
2
North China Electric Power University, Baoding, China

Abstract. In order to equalize the electric potential distribution of the grounding grid surface, and improve the safety
level of the grounding grid, method for optimal arrangement of conducts in the grounding grid is proposed in this
paper. The calculation results about maximum touch voltages and mesh potentials show that the method can reduce
touch voltage and equilibrium surface potential. It is shown that the design of the grounding grid is related to not only
the soil environment, but also the rectangular shape. Comparing with other methods, the method proposed in the
paper can reduce maximum touch voltage about 12%. This method also can be applied in a uniform and non-uniform
soil, rectangular and square grounding grids. The optimize effect meets the related standards of the power industry.

1 Introduction There are many electrical parameters to evaluate the

performance about substation grounding grid. The touch
Grounding grid is an important guarantee of the safe voltage is the most difficult to meet the requirements, so
operation in substation. Grounding grid performance has it is selected as the optimization goal to reach the safety
been the hot spot research for a long time. Ground grid requirements in this paper.
can provide a common reference point for various
electrical equipment. When lightning strike or
malfunction occur in power system, the grounding grid 2 The establishment of simulation model
can reduce the substation ground potential rising and
Firstly, it is considered that the square grounding grid
discharge fault current rapidly. The performance of
optimization, assuming that a=b=100m, the square length
grounding grid is directly related to the personal safety
divided into n-1 parts by N ring conductors, each part
and electrical equipment operating normally.
The earliest research is the theory of the arrangement being numbered from left to right, defining Mi (i=1ˈ
grounding grid of the non - uniform soil which was put 2….. ˈ n-1) for the No.i segment accounted for the
forward by Sverak [1]. Dawalibi had made some proportion of total length.
researches about optimal placement of the ring conductor a
in the grounding grid [2-3]. In 1986, Professor Chen
Xianlu of Chongqing University proposed a optimization
method of grounding grid in uniform soil. Professor Zeng
Rong and He Jinliang researched on grounding grid
performance in the high frequency situation. Professor
Sima Wenxia, Wen Xishan arranged grounding grid ring
conductor non-uniformly in uniform soil situation by
means of Genetic Algorithm (GA). Professor Gao b
Yanqing studied on the optimum compression ratio of
grounding grid in non-uniform soil situation. Cao
Xiaobin, Hu Jinsong took the lead on the optimization
design of the rectangular grounding grid [4-10].
The research shows that the index arrangement of the
grounding grid is not the optimal layout scheme. Due to
the rapid attenuation of the exponential function, it will
1 2 ĂĂ n-2 n-1
lead to dense edge mesh when the grounding grid is
optimized. In this paper, a new optimize method can be Figure 1. Unequally spaced grounding grid
applied in the uniform and non-uniform soil condition, When the maximum touch voltage of each mesh is
and it is suitable for the square and rectangular grounding equal, the percentage of each segment is as shown in
grid.

© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
MATEC Web of Conferences 59, 02003 (2016) DOI: 10.1051/ matecconf/20165902003
IC FS T 2016

Table I. Of which, the percentage of the No.i segment is In this formula, only the denominator of the exponent
Mi. With the least square method, the fitting formula is is change, when the area of grounding grid and the
shown in formula 1. number of ring conductors are changed. Therefore, the
optimal fitting formula is shown in formula 2.
i n / 2 2 L Q  
( )  
Mi  e 2
n=1, 2, …, n-1 0L  H E
(1) ˗n=1, 2 , …, n-1 (2)

Table 1. Optimal ground in different segment

n i=1 i=2 i=3 i=4 i=5 i=6 i=7 i=8 i=9 i=10

1 1

2 0.5 0.5

3 0.3125 0.3751 0.3125

4 0.2048 0.2952 0.2952 0.2048

5 0.1327 0.2295 0.2755 0.2295 0.1327

6 0.0824 0.1711 0.2465 0.2465 0.1711 0.0824

7 0.0481 0.1199 0.2074 0.249 0.2074 0.1199 0.0481

8 0.0261 0.0781 0.1622 0.2336 0.2336 0.1622 0.0781 0.0261

9 0.0131 0.0469 0.1168 0.202 0.2425 0.202 0.1168 0.0469 0.0131

10 0.006 0.0258 0.0772 0.1602 0.2308 0.2308 0.1602 0.0772 0.0258 0.006
and then decreases with the increase of h. In the case of
In the fitting function b can been considered as a
k>0, b decreases with the increase of h. When h reaches a
parameter. As long as the optimal value of b is obtained,
the optimal layout scheme of the grounding grid can be certain value (about 7 m), b reaches a minimum value,
received. and then increases with the increase of h.

3 The influence of various factors on the 3.2 Reflectional coefficient

optimal coefficient Figure 3 shows that relationship between b and
reflectional coefficient of double soil. When the upper
3.1 The upper soil thickness soil thickness h is a constant coefficient, b decreases with
the increase of k. That means the lower soil resistivity is
The relationship between the optimal parameter value b larger and ground grid is more uniform, when the upper
and the upper soil thickness h and the reflectional layer soil thickness is constant value.
coefficient k is shown in figure 2. 
4 h=2
5  h=5
k=-0.3 k=0.7 3.5
4.5 k=0.5 h=8
RSWLPDOYDOXHRIE

k=-0.5
2SWLPDOYDOXHRIE

k=-0.7 k=0.3 3 h=20

4 k=0 h=26
3.5 2.5 h=40
3 2
2.5 1.5
2 1 
-0.8 -0.5 0 0.5 0.8
1.5
k
1 
0 10 20 30 40 Figure 3. L=100m b-k curves
h
Figure 2. L=100 b-h curves
3.3 Grounding grid area
This paper makes a calculation from two situations:
the reflectional coefficient k which is a fixed value and With k=-0.3, the relationship between b and side
greater than zero and less than zero. In the situation of length of grounding grid L is shown in figure 4.
k<0, b increases with the increase of h. When h reaches a
certain value (about 9 m), b reaches a maximum value,

2
MATEC Web of Conferences 59, 02003 (2016) DOI: 10.1051/ matecconf/20165902003
IC FS T 2016

3 
h=2 h=5 h=10 h=20 h=60 150
Methodĉ Method Ċ
2.8
2SWLPDOYDOXHRIE

2.6 100

Touch voltage / V
2.4
50
2.2

2
50 100 150 200 250 300
L 
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
/P
Figure 4. k= - 0.3 b-L curves
The upper layer soil in more than or less than 10m b- Figure 5. Touch voltage distribution on diagonal in non-
uniform area
L curve shows different trends.
If the h<10m, the value of b decreases as the length In the Figure 5, the touch voltage of edge mesh
increases. If the h>10m, the value of b increases as the increases with method II, but the touch voltage of middle
length increases. When the length increased to 180m, the mesh reduces. And the peak touch voltage of the whole
optimal b value tends to be stable. network is basically the same relative to the method I.
According to the above results, the optimal fitting Finally, it is balanced mesh touch voltage in grounding
formula of b value should be divided into two situations: grid with method II.
hı10m and h<10m.
4 To optimize the formula in the
3.4 Fitting formula for computing the optimal application of the rectangular grounding
value of b grid
Due to the optimization parameters is related to soil
thickness, reflectional coefficient and the area of the 4.1 Ensure each side of the rectangle section
grounding grid, three parameters are set as independent number
variables with the neural network fitting method, and
each data is considered as a three-dimensional coordinate Ring conductor layout of rectangular grounding grid
point. Let b=f(h,k,L), and the expression is shown in which is 100×60m is obtained by the fitting formula. The
formula 3. number of long segments is 8. The number of wide
b  a  c h  d  L  e k (3)
segments starts from 1 to 8 as shown Figure 6. The touch
voltages with the different widths are shown in table 3.
The corresponding coefficients of soil thickness of
different grounding grids are shown in the following table Table 3. Max value, min value and D-value in rectangle
2.
The The The The
Table 2. Coefficient values of fitting formula segmentatio maximum minimum difference
n number value value value
a c e of width /V /V /V
K d
1 205.098 70.168 134.930
h  10m 2.1492 0.0526 -0.0015 -1.1351
2 179.139 66.220 112.919
h  10m 2.4067 -0.0053 0.0007 -1.0298
3 156.484 57.622 98.861

3.5 The optimization effect inspection in non- 4 132.232 52.192 80.04

uniform soil situation
5 113.678 46.748 66.930
The enclosed station grounding grid is 100×100m2.
6 104.897 37.293 67.603
There are seven ring conductors in horizontal and vertical
directions. Grounding depth is 0.5m. The ring conductor 7 101.374 27.399 73.976
radius is 0.08m. The upper soil resistivity is 185.714Ω•m,
and the thickness is 2 meters. The lower soil resistivity is 8 97.163 19.048 78.115
100Ω•m. The current is 1kA. The grounding grid is
arranged respectively with the optimal compression ratio
optimization method (method I) and the fitting function
method (method II which is the method of this paper)

3
MATEC Web of Conferences 59, 02003 (2016) DOI: 10.1051/ matecconf/20165902003
IC FS T 2016

a
The method II reduces the marginal mesh size, and
increase the middle mesh size relative to the method I.
This arrangement can balance mesh touch voltage and
reduce the maximum touch voltage .
b After fitting, the maximum touch voltage is 155V
with the method I. The maximum touch voltage is 138V
with the method II. It is reduced by 12.1%.

Figure 6. Rectangle grounding grid for simulation

When the maximum touch voltage is close to the 140
minimum touch voltage , the optimization is the best. 120
The Table III shows that when the segmentation

Touch voltage /V
100
number of width is 5, maximum and minimum difference 80

is minimal. When the aspect ratio is close to the ratio of 60

segments, the optimization effect is best. 40

20
Table 4. Divided method of width in different rectangle 0
150
80
The The 100
60
The length The length of 40
segmentation segmentation 50
of the side a the side b 20
number of number of 0 0
/m /m Y/m X/m
length width
100 50 8 4 Figure 8. Touch voltage distribution of the total station with
method II
100 60 8 5

100 70 8 6

100 80 8 7
160

100 90 8 8 140
120
Touch voltage /V

100
80
4.2 The optimization effect inspection in non-
60
uniform soil
40
20
In a rectangular grounding grid, rectangular length is
0
120m and the width is 80m.The soil situation is same to 150
III. 100
80
60
With the optimal compression ratio method(method I) 50 40
and the fitting function method (method II which is the 20
0 0
method of this paper), the touch voltage distribution on Y/m X/m

diagonal is shown in Figure 7. The touch voltage

distribution of the total station with method II is shown in Figure 9. Touch voltage distribution of the total station with
Figure 8. As shown in Figure 9, the touch voltage method I
distribution of the total station with method I.

Methodĉ MethodĊ
5 Conclusion

By analyzing the influence of different reflectional
coefficient, the area of grounding grid and the thickness
of the upper soil on the optimal coefficient, this paper
 obtains the optimal formula of the optimal coefficient,
Touch voltage / V

and applies it to the optimization of the rectangular

grounding grid in the non-uniform soil. The calculation
 results show that:
In view of the different reflectional coefficient, the
upper layer soil thickness and the area of the grounding

   grid, the calculation formula of the optimal layout is
/ P obtained.
Figure 7. Diagonal touch voltage distribution in homogeneous
In the rectangular grounding grid, when the aspect
soil with the method I and II ratio is close to the ratio of segments, the optimization
effect is best.

4
MATEC Web of Conferences 59, 02003 (2016) DOI: 10.1051/ matecconf/20165902003
IC FS T 2016

Through the above results, this formula is also

applicable for rectangular grounding grids and non-
uniform soils. The maximum contact voltage is reduced
by about 12%.

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