Grounding system (GS) represents one of the most essential items of the power plants and substation systems design. The main objective of power system substation grounding grids is to maintain reliable operation and protect personnel and equipment during fault conditions. For all substations planning, economical and effective GS plays an essential role since the absence of effective grounding grid can result in mal-operation of protective devices and hazardous for operators and substation equipment. Therefore, in this paper, the evolutional technique for unequally spaced grounding grid design is suggested. The design is based on hybridization of optimum compression ratio (OCR) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) techniques. This approach is purposed to control the grounding copper volume of the GS with the aid of controlling of unequally spaced grounding conductor lengths with reference to the safety measures. The proposed technique offers almost 20% of copper savings comparing with the optimum compression ratio method. |
