Earthing System Design

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 and knowing what hazard this presents today, is simply not known.

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30/11/2018 By Ian 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).

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15/10/2018 By Ian 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).

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26/02/2018 By Ian 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

03/09/2017 By Hugh 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?

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Earthing System Design

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