Grounding in a Substation

The grounding system (Sistema de Puesta A Tierra PAT) must be designed primarily to protect nearby people from an earth fault inside and outside a Substation (Sub Estación (SE) Transformadora) and, in addition, to ensure the correct operation of the equipment. This article presents a comparison between the step voltage measurements performed to a PAT grid of a wind farm and the simulation of the same SE grid with the ETAP program, suitable for this type of studies. For this simulation, the Finite Element Method (MEF: Método de Elementos Finitos) is used, where the step voltages in the public area outside the perimeter fence were calculated. The results obtained by means of calculations, compared with the measurements made, are considered acceptable.