Abstract:The knowledge of ground return current in fault occurrence plays a key role in the dimensioning of the earthing grid of substations and of cable sealing end compounds, in the computation of rise of earth potential at substation sites and in electromagnetic interference (EMI) on neighbouring parallel metallic conductors (pipes, handrails, etc.). Moreover, the ground return current evaluation is also important in steady-state regime since this stray current can be responsible for EMI and also for alternating current (AC) corrosion. In fault situations and under some assumptions, the ground return current value at a substation site can be computed by means of k-factors. The paper shows that these simplified and approximated approaches have a lot of limitations and only multiconductor analysis can show the ground return current behaviour along the cable (not only the two end values) both in steady-state regime and in short circuit occurrence (e.g., phase-to-ground and phase-to-phase-to-ground). Multiconductor cell analysis (MCA) considers the cable system in its real asymmetry without simplified and approximated hypotheses. The sensitivity of ground return current on circuit parameters (cross-bonding box resistances, substation earthing resistances, soil resistivity) is presented in the paper. OPEN ACCESSEnergies 2014, 7 8117

Single-phase positive sequence modelling is often used in power systems when power flows and short circuit analysis are assessed. Of course, the use of single-phase positive sequence modelling assumes purely three-phase configurations and perfectly symmetrical ones so that single-phase modelling considers that all the phase conductors behave in the same way. When considering the physical reality of power networks, this assumption can be questionable and the behaviors of all the system conductors including the passive ones (earth wires for overhead lines, metallic screens and armours for cables and enclosures for gas insulated lines) is completely unknown. Therefore, the present multiconductor cell analysis (MCA) becomes necessary, since it allows one to achieve great precision results on the regimes of both phase conductors and passive conductors. MCA offers a powerful tool in order to validate (or less) approximated and simplified computation methods. In particular, for single and double circuit overhead lines (OHLs), the current phasors induced in the earth wires and the ground return current alongside the line can be directly computed by MCA in steady state and faulty regimes. It is worth noting that, for faulty regimes, MCA allows also evaluating the approximation degree and validity field of screening factors k.

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