GreyMatters

Electrical Earthing System Design & Soil Resistivity Testing

You are here: Home / Archives for Electrical Earthing / Earthing System Design

Earthing System Design

By Leave a Comment

November 2018 – Earthing Standards update (Rail)

For the past few years. GreyMatters has been fortunate enough to support the rail electrification and upgrade programmes across the UK for Earthing Design. And maintaining a consistent approach across a building programme of this scale can be a massive engineering headache for all design teams concerned.

Especially, when Earthing Standards touches on so many disciplines along the way – from civils, OLE (Overhead line equipment), signals, EMC, 3rd parties, ecologies, geophysical as well as the more obvious general E&B (earthing and bonding).

[Read more…] about November 2018 – Earthing Standards update (Rail)

By Leave a Comment

How to Size High Voltage Earthing Conductors Correctly

What size conductors should I use? And, is there a simple table I can use for this high voltage earthing design? These are great questions that I’m often asked. This post answers these questions together with the choice of conductor materials and jointing method within a high voltage earthing design project.

Assessing conductor size is entirely dependent on the electrical configuration and the load that the conductor must take. For example, an above-ground bonding conductor serves to transfer current with minimal voltage drop, from A to B. A directly buried conductor has an additional purpose, that of leaking the fault current/voltage into the local geology (as part of an electrode).

[Read more…] about How to Size High Voltage Earthing Conductors Correctly

By Leave a Comment

Putting electricity in perspective – a view from an earthing designer

We like to think electricity has been around for years, right? It certainly ‘feels’ like we should know all there is to know.  But as an earthing designer. The scientific community tells us we humans are not good at time perspective that falls outside our immediate field of vision.  No surprises here.  But, [Read more…] about Putting electricity in perspective – a view from an earthing designer

By Leave a Comment

Standard earthing design – are they valid anymore?

A number of organisations across the UK recommend a standard earthing design when building smaller scale substations. The key driver behind these is one of cost. Nobody wants to pay more than they have to. For an HV connection using a templated approach to meet Earthing Standards compliance kind of makes sense – or does it?

So, the question is – does installing a standard earthing design meet your obligations under the Electricity at Work regulations?

[Read more…] about Standard earthing design – are they valid anymore?

By Leave a Comment

Split factor revealed for Best Practice in Earthing Design

I’m often asked about Reduction factors or ‘Split factor‘ when looking at Earthing Designs.  So what do these factors refer to? Why are they necessary? And when should you apply them?

What is a Split Factor (or Reduction)?

In Earthing terms, the Split Factor defined as the ‘split’ or proportion of fault energy that chooses to use soil conduction as its preferred route back to the source, compared with how much of the energy takes alternative route(s).  Alternative routes could be the cable sheath arrangements, CPCs or any other conductive structures intentionally or unintentionally bonded.

[Read more…] about Split factor revealed for Best Practice in Earthing Design
This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Read more.