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09/05/2019 By Dominic Warren-Gash CEng MEng MIET Leave a Comment

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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26/03/2019 By Ian Leave a Comment

Here’s something else to make your life a little easier! A lightning-quick risk assessment service

Ever needed a quick response Lightning Protection Risk assessment service? Here is something we’ve tried to make incredibly easy for you to use. You can now order and pay online, and the risk assessment to IEC 62305-2 can be turned around within a week with our premium service, or two weeks on our normal service.

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28/02/2019 By Hugh Leave a Comment

Test large electrode systems using heavy current – for more accurate earth electrode resistance measurements

I recently attended a training session with Omicron in Germany, looking at their primary injection test set for earth electrode and line impedance testing. We looked at how to set up a current injection, potentially up to 100 A, down an Overhead line or Feeder cable to achieve good separation between the electrode under test and the auxiliary electrode.

Previously, test methods have relied on dedicated cables for the measurement, which has limited the available area to deploy the auxiliary electrode, owing to land usage constraints and roads. So, being able to use something in a built-up environment on electrically large HV systems avoiding road closures, etc. comes as a breath of fresh air to a lot of engineers facing this problem.

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31/01/2019 By Ian Leave a Comment

Brief Answers to the Big Questions

Here’s a slight departure from the usual technical blog – so, the holiday’s are a distant memory, yet, the scene outside my window right now looks like something out of “A Christmas Carol”, by Charles Dickens. This time of year is a strange one for us; both December and January are truncated by the holidays which can mean playing catch-up on the work-related items to recover from the time spent during family reunions.

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