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A CALCULATION METHOD FOR THE STUDY OF GROUNDING ELECTRODES

INTERFERENCES IN HVDC TRANSMISSION SYSTEMS.

J. D. Rayo
JRI Ingeniera S.A.

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a methodology to estimate the different possible interferences caused by the
Grounding Electrodes (corrosion, unwanted currents in power transformers and electric systems, and
dangerous electric potentials). After briefly describe the main effects caused by the operation of the
Electrodes, the document proposes a model and a way to confront the problems by utilizing two useful
mathematical tools to quantify their possible impact: the Finite Element (FE) Method and the Mixed
Finite Element (MFE) Method. The first tool has been widely utilized to calculate the electric
potentials for similar cases of studies, including HVDC electrodes. Nevertheless, this method has
certain numerical difficulties to quantify the current fluxes through conductive materials. Those
problems result in a contradiction to the physics of the problem, by not satisfying one of the Maxwell
equations and therefore lead to an inefficient quantification of the possible effects of the Electrodes
operation. The second tool confronts that numerical problem and allows, in a more precise and trustful
way, to calculate the electric fields and current fluxes. In an attempt to advance in this HVDC
transmission issue, this document proposes to work with both methods together, and to use the
advantages that each one has for each type of environmental impact.

KEYWORDS

HVDC, Ground Electrode, Potential Calculation, Current Density, Corrosion, Area of Impact,
Environmental Impact, Interferences, Finite Elements.

1. INTRODUCTION

One of the most important components of HVDC transmission systems are the Grounding Electrodes.
These provide the physical connection between ground currents flowing from one converter station to
the other through the soil, using the Earth as a conductive material. Ground Electrodes satisfy the
following three main tasks: (1) fix the 0[VDC] ground voltage of the DC circuit, (2) establish a path
where unbalanced currents between poles can flow, and finally, (3) establish an alternative path for
currents to flow if one of the poles fails [3] . Current injection through long time periods produces
environmental impacts that are different from the ones that are made in AC systems because of the
permanent flow of the current. This makes the need of controlling that flow and doing mitigations to
the different installations that could be interfered. Another significant difference is that this area of
impact can reach several kilometers of radius, which make more probable to cause problems to
someone elses installations. This last idea is one of the main reasons of which site location is a non-
trivial issue, where not only local techno-economical variables are involved, but environmental issues
reduces and/or difficult the site location possibilities. For these last reasons, a good Interference Study

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becomes an important step to determine if any potential interference is really a restrictive condition to
choose a site or if their consequences can be mitigates or depicted.

2. INTERFERENCES

DC current injection through long periods of time produces certain environmental impacts different
from the one that is made in AC systems. Besides any visual, construction or electrode lines impacts,
the less evident ones are caused by their operation at HVDCs maximal or nominal current. The size of
the area of influence may varies depending on the amount of current injected, average the time of
operation during a year, the resistivity of the soil and the distance and size of the object to impact. The
design of the electrodes may have certain impact, but its influence can be proven that is only local.
This document is focused only in studying the following types of impacts (see Figure 1):

1. Corrosion in large metallic and unprotected pipes or in large buried metallic structures (e.g.:
transmission lines with guard line, transformers neutrals grounding, others), for which a
calculus of current density (J(x)) in specific points is needed.
2. The total currents (Ii) though transmission and distributions lines, transformers neutrals, for
which a calculus of the integral of J(x) in the grounding systems is needed.
3. Electrification (transferred potentials) in large metallic fences and radial irrigation systems,
for which a calculus of electric potential v(x) in certain points specific is needed.

External AC line

Figure 1. Possible interferences during electrode operation.

3. THEORETICAL MODELS

The physical phenomenon that describes the behavior of the dissipated currents from the
Ground Electrode can be studied through the theory of Maxwell Equations. To simplify the
system, it is going to be assumed that the injected current is in steady state and is a perfect
constant function in time. (I(t) = Io.). Other cases have no interest for the type of interferences
studied1. On the other hand, the inner resistivity of the electrode is going to be disregarded, so
the electric potential in the entire electrode is constant inside it and in its surface. Finally, the
mathematical modeling of the problem is adjusted in the electro-kinetic model [4] [5] ,
represented by the following formulas and in Figure 2, which is presented in an abstract way:

1
High frequency components could eventually cause interference in nearby communication systems.
Nevertheless, these other phenomenon is out of the scope of this paper.

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r r r r r r r r r r r r
(1) grad (v ( x )) = E ( x ) (2) div ( J ( x )) = J ( x ) = 0 (3) J ( x ) = ( x ) E ( x )

Where E is the electric field, J is the current density flux, the electric conductivity and v the
electric potential. It is important to remark that the electric conductivity is a function of the
space, which can violently vary and can show a very wide variation from one conductive
material to other, including metallic ones (if specific data is required to be considered for
metals). Respect to boundary conditions, these are defined according to the nature of the
boundary: for electrodes bounds el, the total current that goes out from it must be the current
injected by the HVDC scheme (4); for ground surface sup, the normal component of current
density must be zero (5), for the far enough points inf, the electric potential v is imposed to
be zero2(6), and finally for an infinitely conductive metallic objects i, the electric potential
will be a constant, but unknown value (7). These conditions are presented below:
r r r r r r r r r
(6) v( x ) = 0 x inf
(4) J ( x ) n dS = I
el
0 (5) J ( x ) n = 0 x sup

r r r r r r r r
(7) v( x ) = vi x i (8) J ( x ) n dS
in
= J ( x ) n dS
out

Figure 2. Electric Model

4. NUMERIC RESOLUTION

This document proposes the utilization of two mathematical tools that can be useful for this
kind of phenomenology: Finite Elements and Mixed Finite Elements. It is proposed to work
with both methods together, and to use the advantages that each one has for each type of
environmental impact: FE for potential transference and the MFE for corrosion in metallic

2
This value is imposed to be zero just to simplify the problem. Other values can be imposed, which will only
shift the results of the electric potentials. The values of E and J wont change, due to it has been working with a
current source, instead of a voltage source.

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structures and unwanted currents in electric systems. Both techniques are able to be
understood and handled by specialized mathematicians or engineers in numerical methods.

4.1 Finite Elements

This is a widely known and utilized methodology in sciences and engineering; even for this
and many other applications. Examples for HVDC electrodes can be seen in [6] and other
illustrative example can be seen in [4] . Its utilisation, in this case, is focused mainly to
calculate, in a precise way, the electric potentials generated by the current injection to the
ground and given a 0[V] reference potential. The result is a continuous function in space,
where boundary conditions are relatively simple to deduce. On the other hand, electric field
and current density are constant vectors by part on each element on the mesh. For technical
and theoretical details on the modelling of the weak problem (9) there exists a wide
bibliography available. The weak formulation, constructed from (1), (2) and (3) and the
application of Greens theorem, to be solved by finite elements is the following:

Let be the space of study and let vt = v~ v 0 such that v 0 C 1 ( ) function affine, where
v0 = vtest x el , v0 = vinf x inf and v 0 = vi , x i , i , then, the new problem is: Find
v h ( x) V = {q H 1 () / q | inf = q | el = q | i 0, i} , such that w( x ) V :

r r r
(9) ( x ) grad (v( x )) grad ( w( x )) = 0

I 0 vtest
Finally, the solution of the problem is v = vt , were = r
(v n)dx
el

4.2 Mixed Finite Elements

This second methodology corresponds to a mathematical method usually utilized when a
more precise calculus of the potentials gradient is needed. It is a methodology widely utilized
in fluid mechanics and more complicated electromagnetism problems [7] . The advantage of
using this method is that calculates current density more precise, which is the real variable of
interest in the estimation of possible corrosive effects or unwanted currents through external
grounding systems. The utilization of this method can force (3) in the numerical solution
when the correct element and formulation is defined. This leads to a closer to reality
simulation with respect to the previous method, where the main advantage is the possibility to
force the conservation of current between each element. This will allow tracking more
precisely the current flux or where does current go.
The statement of the problem to solve is basically the simultaneous resolution of two
equations that come from (1), (2) and (3) and the application of Greens theorem. Technical
and theoretical details can be found in [7] Finally the weak formulation to be solved is the
following:
r r r r r
Find
r
{ ( )
J t ( x ) X = U H 1 (div, ) / U n |sup = 0 } and vt ( x ) M = L20 ( ) , such that
r r
(U ( x ), q ( x )) X M :

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r r r r r r r r r
(10)
1
( J t U ) d x v t div (U ) d x = v test (U n ) d x v i (U n )d x
el i i
r r
(11) q div( J t )dx = 0

I 0 vtest
Finally, the solution of the problem is v = vt and J = J t were = r
(v n)dx
el

5. FLOATING METALLIC CONDUCTORS BORDER CONDITIONS

Even though, the two weak formulations presented are well posed3, the values of border
conditions vi corresponding to perfectly conductive metallic structures are still unknown. To
solve this, it is proposed a way to calculate the new boundary conditions by the means of
calculating an equivalent electric circuit based on the problem to solve. Figure 3 show an
example of 2 metallic conductors designed as v1 and v2, in an abstract space where infinity
and the electrode are also two perfectly metallic conductors and the surface of the soil, the
external boundaries of the set. In this equivalent circuit (Figure 4), each one of its nodes will
represent a perfectly conductive metallic structure. Additionally, between each node, there
will be an equivalent electric resistance. The new problem is to determine the potentials
needed to be imposed on each node, in order that they do not inject or absorb any kind of
additional currents.

This new definition of the problem results on a simple linear system (Eq. 1), where the values
of the matrix will depend on the electric resistances between each node which the only way to
calculate is to run several different simulation of the model to calculate them one by one. This
means that if there are N metallic structures, it is needed to do at least 2+N(N-1) different
previous simulations to calculate the different resistances. Once that is done, it is possible to
simulate the main problem in order to fulfill the main purpose. The simulations can be done
either in finite elements or mixed finite elements, but one time one methodology is chosen, it
cannot be changed or false currents may appear.

Figure 3. Abstract model of 2 metallic conductors Figure 4. Equivalent Circuit

r r
3
With the unique condition that 0 < ( x ) < , x and L

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   1. . .  Eq. 1. Linear System to Solve

 
 
 
  1. . .  Where vel = vtest , vinf = 0 and I i = 0

   
 
  0 ,  1. . . /  , where I i represent the current

 
  ! 
  #
 1. . .  injected by each metallic object
(which should be zero).
"

6. SIMULATIONS

In order to show and compare the performance of the methods, two pairs of simulations are
run. To simplify the problem, a 2D model is programmed as shown in Figures 5 and 6. The
problem is based on a spherical electrode in the middle of the space, where on the left there is
an ideal transmission line (perfectly conductive) and to the right a large pipeline. The
transmission line is 6[km] from the electrode and has 15[km]. The pipeline is 5[km] from the
electrode, has 20[km] length. The resistivity of the pipe is set to be 10-3[m]. The soil has a
constant resistivity of 100[] and 1000[A] are injected through the earth.

To evaluate the performance of both numerical methods, an important thing to notice is the
difference between current injected by the electrode and the absorbed by the Earth at infinity.
Another checkpoint is the total current absorbed by the pipeline, which is supposed to be zero
in its totality by (2). Finally it is also recommended to check if the current that enters the line
is the same that exits it in the other point. In the tables of results presented, the first one shows
the performance in a rough mesh and the second one in an optimized one. It can be seen that
the first two checkpoints are not satisfied by FEM in none of the cases. In this example, the
figures are presented only to illustrate the behavior of the fields and potentials and especially
the influence of including large metallic objects and transmission lines in the models. The
graphics shows that including those installations in the model affect the result in an important
way. Not including them could lead to a bad interpretation of the results. On the other hand,
any errors are difficult to see in the graphics, so the results on the tables and a priori and a
posteriori error analysis are fundamental to be presented in an interference study of this kind.

In this case, all the simulations are done with FreeFem++4, program based on C++, dedicated
to finite element methods, which enables to solve Partial Differential Equations (PDE) easily
and in an abstract way. For Finite Elements, P1 Elements were utilized, and for Mixed Finite
Elements, P1 Raviart-Thomas elements were utilized.

Figure 5. Electric Potential with Finite Elements

4
www.freefem.org/f++/

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Figure 6. Electric Potential with Mixed Finite Elements

Figure 7. Current Density with Finite Elements

Figure 8. Current Density with Mixed Finite Elements

Galerkin Finite Elements Mixed Finite Elements

Electrode Current 1000[A] 1000[A]
Infinity Current 1295.51[A] 1000[A]
Electrode Resistance 260.265[Ohm] 217.162[Ohm]
Line In Current 115.184[A] 81.6187[A]
Line Out Current -115.184[A] -81.6187[A]
Total Pipe Current 97.841[A] 1.39065e-015[A]
Table 1. Simulation Results (Non - Optimized Mesh)

Galerkin Finite Elements Mixed Finite Elements

Electrode Current 1000[A] 1000[A]
Infinity Current 1009.5[A] 1000[A]
Electrode Resistance 210.271[Ohm] 211.296[Ohm]
Line In Current 73.4661[A] 82.5151[A]
Line Out Current -73.4661[A] -82.5151[A]
Total Pipe Current 6.47859[A] 9.68147e-014[A]
Table 2. Simulation Results (Optimized Mesh)

7. CONCLUSIONS

It has been proposed and described a mathematical model and two numerical tools that, from
the point of view of the author of this publication, are considered enough to be able to
perform a good enough electrode interference study. It has been shown that Finite Elements is
a good enough tool to calculate electric potentials, but Mixed Finite Element Method is a
better mathematical tool to calculate current flux and electric field, due to its performance in
the calculus of fluxed, where the conservation of the current can be respected.

MFE is a method that allows keeping track of current flows because it implicitly considers
current conservation. This allows to explicitly answering the question where does the current
go? instead of what are the effects of current injections? (in terms of ground potentials)
For the author of this document, the first question is the most appropriate to ask.

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It can be shown that when the topology of the problem gets more complicated, the accuracy
of the measure of the current with Finite Elements Method gets worse: nonexistent current
start to appear and grow. In the case of the electrode simulations, these differences in terms of
amperes could lead to bad conclusions, so a more trustful method is needed. Mixed Finite
Elements with Raviart Thomas elements ensures the conservation of the current and it is
recommended to be used for these purposes.

In both presented simulations, it has been shown that mesh definition could lead different
results. This is a serious simulation problem, especially for these cases, where the electrode,
pipes and transmission lines are very small objects comparing to the simulation space. This
implies that mesh design can become a very delicate subject. A priori and a posteriori error
analysis are recommended to be done in order to maintain boundaries on this error and
minimizing the time of calculations (especially if several simulations have to be done).
Resistivity data precision is a problem that was not discussed in this publication, but it is
considered an important issue to be discussed in a serious Interference Study. The presented
mathematical tools can help doing a sensibility analysis for these matters.

It has been seen that interference phenomena of the electrodes is a complex problem and a
more complicated tool has to be utilized. Only few considerations and simplifications can be
done a priori, so the professional that will be in charge of an integral interference study using
numerical methods like the previous ones has to do several essays before leading to
conclusions. Good judgment in physical and mathematical terms is mandatory, so it is
strongly recommended that not only engineers but specialist in numerical methods were
involved in the simulations, and that the solutions for numerical problems like the ones
presented should be explicitly presented, giving explicit boundaries for error sources in
calculations.

REFERENCES

[1] CIGRE Working Group, General Guidelines for the Desing of Ground Electrodes for HVDC
Links, 1998.
[2] EPRI EL-2020, HVDC Ground Electrode Design. Research Project 1467-1 Final Report,
1981.
[3] L. Vallejos, J. Rayo, DIMENSIONAMIENTO DE ELECTRODOS DE PUESTA A TIERRA
TIPO ANILLO PARA SISTEMAS DE TRANSMISIN HVDC. XIII ENCUENTRO
REGIONAL IBEROAMERICANO DE CIGR, Puerto Iguaz, Argentina.
[4] M. Valencia, P. Dular, ANALYTICAL AND FINITE ELEMENT MODELING OF
GROUNDING SYSTEMS. IX International Symposium on Lightning Protection, Foz de
Iguazu, Brasil.
[5] P. Dular, W. Legros, H. De Gersem and K. Hameyer, FLOATING POTENTIALS IN
VARIOUS ELECTROMAGNETIC PROBLEMS USING THE FINITE ELEMENT METHOD.
Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Electric and Magnetic Fields, pp. 409-414,
1998
[6] M. Kuussaari U. Jonsson, A. Nyman and S. Orivuori, EXPERIENCES OF THE MITIGATION
OF CORRROSION OF BURIED METAL STRUCTURE IN THE SURRONDING OF
MONOPOLAR HVDC EARTH ELECTRODES. Cigr 1992 Session, pages pp. 36-201, 1992.
[7] C. Hazard . Lunville E. Bcache, P. Ciarlet, LA METHODE DES LEEMENTS FINIS - DE
LA THEORIE A LA PRACTIQUE II. COMPLEMENTS. ENSTA ParisTech, 2010.

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