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28/06/2019 By Ian Leave a Comment

Low Voltage & High Voltage Earthing Protection – A Case Study at an EFW Plant

In the context of electrical earthing or grounding. Electrical earthing protection defined as the Protective Earthing of electrical installations at low voltage, i.e. <1,000V AC as described in Electrical Earthing Standards BS 7430.

In this case study, we take a look at a few challenges we came across while designing the HV Earthing and Lightning Protection systems for a 9MW Energy from Waste Plant in Europe.

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19/06/2019 By Ian Leave a Comment

Are you getting tired of people stealing your lovely earthing arrangements

Good news – having just finished a project to pin lovely shiny copper conductors to their supporting structures protecting their Earthing Arrangements. We’ve ended up with quite a few surpluses of the Fischer FNAII stainless pins (we call them Titan pins – part no. 044112) left over … 3,400 to be exact!

These bad boys are simple to fit concrete structures using a 6mm dia masonry drill at discrete spacings (typically 500mm) to make things incredibly hard for a thief to remove the valuable conductor without spending considerable time trying. This arrangement is not a silver bullet, but even if they do persist all that they can practically do is to cut away a 500mm section at a time not 10’s or 100’s of meters — therefore slowing the whole process down massively.

Thus, making things incredibly frustrating for the thief and making them more vulnerable to getting caught as well as reducing how much of the conductor goes missing.

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10/06/2019 By Ian Leave a Comment

Serious Questions to Ask Before You Hire Your Next Electrical Earthing Consultant. Including Me!

High Voltage Earthing is one of the hot topics within the electrical system design sector. Sound advice and knowledge can really make a difference in controlling the build-budget. And the number of technical queries (TQ’s) generated. Particularly relevant on the more complicated projects. So selecting the right Electrical Earthing Consultant can make your life so much easier in the long run.

Making the grade: How well designed is your substation and its protection systems

Today is just another day at your local HV substation. Inside, the transformers gently hum and switchgear sit idle. Outside, a neighbour’s neglected tree loses a branch, which clashes with an overhead line. Ask yourself: What happens next? That depends on the substation design and their protection systems, which are the focus of this post.

Protection systems

So, what are protection systems? It’s a system that controls switchgear to detect and correct electrical faults. Generally, combining In a home, the switchgear and protection in a single unit, such as a fuse or MCB. The high voltage world is surprisingly similar, only the switchgear is much larger, and the protection systems are separated.

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11/04/2019 By Hugh Leave a Comment

How do I know my 1950’s earthing arrangements are still keeping my workforce safe?

I thought I’d continue from my last blog piece talking about heavy current injection earth testing. By talking about a key application where it can potentially deliver much better results than the modern CDEGS approach on your earthing arrangements.

Many industrial sites were built in the 1950s and 60s as industrialisation grew. This, in line with the expansion of the electrical grid, led to a huge program of electrical substation construction around the world. What this means is that some of us own the responsibility of managing sites with ageing transformers, assets and equipment. Which were designed to obsolete standards? Therefore knowing what hazard this presents today, is simply not known.

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