A new monitoring technique for the grounding grids

Abstract

The performance and reliability of grounding grids depend on its structural integrity. If grounding conductors are damaged, it may cause misoperation of protective relay which leads to trip feeders unnecessarily. It can also cause not only failures on the surroundings such as the grounding grid, secondary circuits’ cables, and structural elements but also voltage hazard for human. The circuits may attain unacceptable voltages when short-circuit fault currents occur in these grids. This paper presents the development of a new technique to monitor the operating conditions of the grounding grids of high voltage apparatus and systems without any diggings and forced outages. New concept, principals, a technique and a device shown in the paper have never been described before by the other authors. The technique is based on the evaluation of the electromagnetic field distribution pattern over the damaged horizontal elements of the grid.