Substation Grounding
Grounding at power substations is extremely important. Grounding system provides the ground connection for the grounded neutral for transformers, reactors, and capacitors and also the discharge path for lightning rods, arresters, gaps, and similar devices. It ensures safety to operating personnel by limiting potential differences, which can exist in a substation.
Practical steps in the design of a substation grounding (photo credit: Pacific Power Electrical Contracting LLC)Substation grounding provides a means of discharging and de-energizing equipment in order to proceed with maintenance on the equipment
It also provides a sufficiently low-resistance path to ground to minimize rise in ground potential with respect to remote ground.
Substation safety requirements call for the grounding of all exposed metal parts of switches, structures, transformer tanks, metal walkways, fences, steelwork of buildings, switchboards, instrument transformer secondaries, etc. This means that a person touching or near any of this equipment cannot receive a dangerous shock if a high-tension conductor flashes to or comes in contact with any of the equipment listed.
