Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
3, MAY/JUNE 2002
I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 3. LRGM. 74: Alarm relay; 64: enclosure live fault detection trip relay.
(2)
(3)
TABLE II difference between the rail and ground, and automatically re-
SYSTEM GROUNDING VERSUS TOUCH POTENTIAL AND STRAY CURRENT turn to the normal state of an ungrounded rail when dangerous
voltage is suppressed.
IX. CONCLUSIONS
1) Generic protection schemes of high-resistance and
low-resistance equipment grounding methods were pre-
sented. With the application of modern microprocessor
and digital relays, individual vendors offer their own
brand names for these grounding protection schemes.
There is no industry standard for the resistance values
VII. DC STRAY CURRENT
used in the low- or high-resistance protective relay
The fraction of the dc load current returning to the traction schemes. Some suppliers may promote their low-resis-
power substation via negative rails leaks to ground due to tance protective relay scheme without establishing its
leakage resistance of the insulation pads between running short-circuit current withstand capability. This could
rails and ground. To minimize dc stray current, voltage drop prove to be destructive and dangerous in the case of
across the negative return rails is kept as low as practical heavy short-circuit current established by the system
and the traction power system negative is kept ungrounded grounding protection scheme. Both the protective relay
under normal system operation. The relative magnitude of scheme as well as the shorting device should be capable
the stray current and the vehicle touch potential for various of withstanding the worst case maximum expected dc
system grounding configurations is shown in Table II. Both short-circuit currents.
the stray current and the human safety seem to be balanced by 2) Both the high-resistance and the low-resistance equip-
the thyristor-grounding method as compared to other system ment grounding protective relay schemes in combination
grounding methods. with the preferred GTO system grounding protection
The protective relays shown in Fig. 8 provide complete scheme should be evaluated. The evaluation should be
tripping and isolation of the traction power system in case based upon the short-circuit and rail-to-ground potential
of heavy short-circuit current due to positive-to-ground fault, rise calculations. The results should be reviewed with the
and automatically return to normal configuration once the equipment supplier.
fault is cleared. Reverse GTO may be used at the stations to 3) The substation spacing should be established by per-
suppress dangerous vehicle touch potential; however, it may forming rail-to-ground potential rise and stray current
unnecessarily increase stray current magnitude. analysis under normal and abnormal system operation.
For system grounding purposes, a bidirectional GTO unit
may be needed, depending upon the system parameters
VIII. SAFETY ANALYSIS
and configuration.
The arc associated with dc current has proven to be very 4) When the passenger stations are physically separated
dangerous to personnel and equipment. Thus, the equipment from the traction power substations, a system grounding
grounding and system grounding protection schemes should be protection scheme with reverse GTO similar to one used
optimized to minimize dc fault current if possible. The design at the traction power substation may be employed at the
should also assure that a person in contact with the faulted dc passenger station. This may increase the personnel safety
equipment enclosure or the transit vehicle is not exposed to the from the high vehicle touch potential under rare cases of
danger of electric shock. DC voltage in the range of 60–90 V simultaneous train starting or train bunching conditions.
is considered safe [7], [14] according to the present transit in- 5) The application engineer should carefully evaluate the
dustry practice. Based upon the present trends of more litigation supplier’s equipment and system grounding protective
from such causes as electric shocks and from the nature of some relay schemes. Evaluation should include the overall
humans with pacemakers or metallic components embedded in reliability and factory tests of microprocessor solid-state
human bones by advances in the medical field, it appears that products to assure that their performance is guaranteed.
the safe dc voltage may very well be lower than 60 V.
To reduce the effect of electric shock to passengers, the sta-
X. RECOMMENDATION
tion platform edges should employ high-resistance rubber mats.
Similarly, inside the traction power substation, insulated floors 1) For safe design practices of a dc traction power system,
with very high volume resistivity compound tend to increase the there is a need for the industry standard for clarification of
operator safety from electric shock. high- and low-resistance grounding protection methods
From the safety point of view, running rails should be with recommended resistance values. The standard
grounded, however, from the stray current point of view, they should review and establish the safe touch dc potential
should be kept isolated from ground. To compromise this for the general public and the substation maintenance
requirement, the system grounding protective relay scheme person, especially now when pacemakers and metallic
should ground the rail upon sensing the dangerous voltage bones have become an integral part of the human body.
824 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 38, NO. 3, MAY/JUNE 2002
2) It is recommended that the low-voltage switchgear [10] J. C. Das and R. H. Osman, “Grounding of AC and DC low-voltage and
committee responsible for upgrading ANSI C37.20.1 [4] medium-voltage drive systems,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 34, pp.
205–216, Jan./Feb. 1998.
should review the outdated exception, “LV switchgear [11] IEEE Standard for Low-Voltage DC Power Circuit Breakers Used in
having single polarity dc circuits, rated above 250 V, Enclosures, ANSI/IEEE Standard C37.14-1999.
should be ungrounded. It is recommended that they be [12] “A corrosion control manual for rail rapid transit,” U.S. Department of
Transportation, Washington, DC, Rep. by NASA Design Engineering
connected to the ground only by protecting or indicating Directorate/SRI International/NASA, 1982.
devices of relatively high resistance.” This seems to be [13] C. F. Dalziel and W. R. Lee, “Reevaluation of lethal electric current,”
invalid, as the majority of the modern transit systems IEEE Trans. Ind. Gen. Applicat., vol. IGA-4, pp. 467–476, Sept./Oct.
1968.
are operated ungrounded under normal system operation [14] IEEE Guide for Safety in AC Substation Grounding, ANSI/IEEE Std.
compared to the grounded systems of the past. 80, 2000.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author would like to thank R. Belardo of Earth Tech for
his technical review during the preparation of this paper.
Dev Paul (M’73–SM’90) received the B.Sc. degree
REFERENCES with honors in mathematics and the B.E. (Honors)
[1] “IEEE recommended practices for grounding single polarity DC struc- and M.S.E.E. degrees in electrical engineering from
tures ,” AIEE, Committee Rep., p. 784–790, Oct. 1957. Punjab University, Chandigarh, India, in 1965, 1969,
[2] D. C. Hoffman, “Grounding of DC structures and enclosures,” presented and 1971, respectively. He completed further studies
at the AIEE Winter General Meeting, New York, 1961. in power systems at the University of Santa Clara,
[3] P. Forquer, “Equipment grounding in traction power substations,” pre- Santa Clara, CA, in 1975.
sented at the APTA Annu. Conf., Miami, FL, 1993, Paper 67-R93. In 1972, he joined Kaiser Engineers (now Earth
[4] IEEE Standard for Metal-Enclosed Low-Voltage Power Circuit Breaker Tech), Oakland, CA, as a Design Engineer. He has
Switchgear, ANSI/IEEE Std. C37.20.1. worked on a variety of heavy industrial, cogener-
[5] IEEE Recommended Practices for Grounding of Industrial and Com- ation, commercial, DOD, and DOE facilities, and
mercial Power Systems, IEEE Std. 142-1991. rapid transit rail projects. In his present position as a Senior Professional
[6] National Electrical Code, National Fire Protection Assoc., Quincy, MA, XI, he is responsible for the overall design, analysis, studies, specifications,
1999. installation, project management, system startup, and system integration work
[7] D. Paul, “Operational safety and maintenance considerations for people on rapid transit systems. He has authored several papers published in the IEEE
movers’ DC grounding systems,” presented at the APTA Annu. Conf., TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS and American Public Transit
Buffalo, NY, 1988, Paper 175-R88. Association conference proceedings. His main fields of interests are power
[8] K. J. Moody, “Stray current characteristics of grounded, ungrounded, system analysis, protection, grounding, and harmonics.
and diode grounded DC transit systems,” presented at the CORRO- Mr. Paul is an active member of several committees of the IEEE Industry
SION/94, Baltimore, MD, Mar. 1994. Applications Society. He has served as a Treasurer and Vice Chairman for the
[9] J. S. Morton, “Circuit breaker and protection requirements for DC local IEEE Chapter. He received the Award of Distinction for his M.S.E.E. thesis
switchgear used in rapid transit systems,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., work on power system stability. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the
vol. IA-21, pp. 1268–1273, Sept./Oct. 1985. States of California, Nevada, and Oregon.