Summary

Wind energy is significant contributor to the European targets of 2020 and also has increasing penetration in the electrical systems around the world. Wind is used by wind turbines in order to produce electrical energy which is finally injected to the electrical grid. The installed capacity of the wind farms is growing in annual basis and its contribution on covering European countries electrical energy demand is important. In most of the cases wind turbines are usually installed in isolated or high altitude areas where the wind is sufficient while usually the lightning activity is medium to high. Taking into account that the total height of a wind turbine can exceed 100m, this is more vulnerable to lightning strikes. Furthermore, in the areas where wind turbines are installed, the soil conditions usually are not the required ones and special precautions should be considered for the grounding system design and construction. The grounding system of a wind turbine is part of its lightning protection system as per IEC61400-24 and is recommended to be designed in a way that ensures the lightning current dissipation, equipotential conditions and also the safety of human beings who maybe inside or outside on the pad. Grounding system should be also sufficient for the absorption of earth fault currents that may appear in the MV collector system of the wind farm. The wind turbine grounding system should be designed in such way in order to keep step and touch voltages within the limits defined in IEEE80-2000. In the current paper, is investigated the safety of a wind turbine grounding system considering typical soil conditions and foundation design via simulations in ATP-EMTP which is ideal for steady-state and transient analysis. The simulations are executed in order to be assessed the safety of the wind turbine grounding system design under specific lightning waveforms. The extracted results could be considered as reference for wind farms with similar soil conditions and lightning activity and can reduce the design time of a wind turbine grounding system.

Additional informations

Publication type ISH Collection
Reference ISH2017_379
Publication year
Publisher ISH
File size 1 MB
Pages number 6
Price for non member Free
Price for member Free

Authors

K. KALYMNIOS, E. PYRGIOTI

Keywords

ATP-EMTP, grounding system, lightning, wind turbines

Investigation of wind turbine grounding system safety
Investigation of wind turbine grounding system safety