The result of reducing the tower-footing resistance

is shown in Fig. 4. For example, a line designed for 10 insulators with 400-foot span and 100-ohm footing
resistance,
would have a protection level of 28 000 amperes stroke current maximum. Further, the same line with 20-ohm
footing resistance would have a protection level of 80 000 amperes and with 5 ohms, a level of 126 000 amperes
maximum.
Thus, lowering the footing resistance increases the utility of a given string of insulators. The protection
Therefore, for the higher footing resistances considerably better performance can be expected from increased
insulation, up to a certain limit. However, for the lower footing resistance not much is gained from increased
insulation. If 5 ohms can be obtained, little return can be expected from any increase over 11 insulators,
but for 20 ohms the desirable number of insulators is increased to 17 to obtain the same outage probability

The impulse resistances of various grounds for impulse currents ranging up to 12 000 amperes are shown in Fig. 15.
For grounding resistances in the order of 10 ohms or less, the impulse resistance is only slightly less than the 60cycle value; however, for high ground resistances the impulse resistance is considerably less than the 60-cycle value.
Thus, in estimating line performance footing resistances of ten ohms or less can be taken as the impulse value;
however, if the footing
resistance is high, the impulse resistance should be determined and used in the general curves of Fig. 4. Values of
impulse resistance can be worked out in detail with it.

Chemical treatment of ground has been considered, but this has not been a
satisfactory method for actual line design, it being used more for substation
grounds. The curves of Fig. 16 show that the size of ground rod does not influence the resistance materially
whereas the length is most influential. For this reason it is better either to use small but long rods or many small
rods. The curves of Fig. 16 provide a method of estimating the number of rods necessary to reduce the tower-footing
resistance to a specific magnitude provided the resistivity of the soil is known. These are based on resistivity of 1000
foot ohms.(300 meter-ohm ) For other resistivities the curve can be varie directly in proportion to the changed
resistivity.

The counterpoise is a practical means of reducing the resistance by increased area of earth in contact with the
grounding system. This is nothing more than a conductor buried in the ground, it being run parallel to or at
some angle to the line conductors themselves. The parallel counterpoise as compared to one at right angles gives
a little more coupling with the line conductor. This increase in itself is so small that it need not be considered
in the calculation but rather taken as an additional factorof safety. At the most this could be ten percent but usually
it is less than five percent. If possible a parallel.

Wire or counterpoise buried has an initial surge impedance depending somewhat

on soil conditions is about 150 to 200 ohms
As the surge current travels along the counterpoise this initial surge impedance is
reduced to the leakage resistance in a time depending upon the length of the
counterpoise and the speed of propagation of the surge.
In general, the surge travels at approximately one-third the speed of light so that a 1000-foot counterpoise has an
initial surge impedance of approximately n150 ohms and at the end of six microseconds an effective resistance equal
to the leakage resistance. Likewise, a 250-foot counterpoise has an initial surge impedance of 150 ohms but reduces
to the leakage resistance in 1.5 microseconds.

This indicates the desirability of using many short counterpoises

instead of one long counterpoise as the leakage resistance is dependent
largely upon surface area so that this is the same whether one 1000-foot
counterpoise or four 250-foot counterpoises are
The one important point in applying this rule is to be sure that the leakage resistance of the counterpoise is lower
than the initial surge impedance, otherwise positive reflections result and the tower footing is raised rather than
lowered.