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Decreasing Grounding Resistance of Substation by Deep-Ground-Well

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738
Decreasing Grounding Resistance of Substation by
Deep-Ground-Well Method
Jinliang He, Senior Member, IEEE, Gang Yu, Jingping Yuan, Rong Zeng, Member, IEEE, Bo Zhang, Jun Zou,
and Zhicheng Guan
Abstract—Grounding system is very important to maintain the
safe and reliable operation of power network and ensure the safety
of power apparatus and operators. A new technique to decrease
grounding resistance of substation is presented in this paper, which
makes use of deep ground well to decrease the grounding resis-
tance. The ground well is formed by metal tube with water perco-
lation apertures in the soil with groundwater, which has the ability
to gather the groundwater and wet the surrounding soil. The prin-
ciple of deep ground well to decrease grounding resistance is to de-
crease the resistivity of the soil region surrounding the grounding
well by leading the groundwater moving to the deep ground well
under pressure, and consequently decrease the grounding resis-
tance of the deep ground well. This novel method was applied in
a substation grounding engineering, and good effect was achieved.
Index Terms—Deep ground well, grounding electrode, grounding
resistance, grounding system, soil resistivity, substation.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE grounding system of substation is a very important
and fundamental countermeasure to guarantee the safe and
reliable operation of power system, and ensure human being’s
safety in the situation of grounding fault in power system [1]. It
is a key method to decrease the electromagnetic interferences in
substations, too.
Safe operation of the power system requires a sound
grounding system. When a short-circuit fault current is injected
into a grounding system, if its grounding resistance is too
high, then the grounding potential rise (GPR) of the grounding
system would be very high, this is a threat to operator. Some-
times, the high GPR would destroy control cables, and lead
high voltage into control room of substation, this would make
control devices misfunctional or reject operating instruction,
then would cause huge economical loss and social effect. A lot
of these kinds of faults had taken place in China.
With the rapid expansion of the capacity of power system,
the short-circuit fault current rises enormously. Under such sit-
uations, the grounding resistance should be low enough to guar-
antee the safety of the power system. However, the locations of
those substations constructed in urban areas in these years are
Manuscript received December 16, 2003; revised June 14, 2004. Paper no.
TPWRD-00637-2003.
J. He, R. Zeng, B. Zhang, J. Zou, and Z. Guan are with the Department of
Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail:
hejl@tsinghua.edu.cn; zengrong@tsinghua.edu.cn; shizbcn@tsinghua.edu.cn;
zoujun@tsinghua.edu.cn; guanzc@tsinghua.edu.cn).
G. Yu is with China Power Engineering Consulting (Group), Beijing 100011,
China.
J. Yuan is with Heyuan Electric Power Company, Guangdong 517000, China.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2005.844301
0885-8977/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005
not in good sites with low soil resistivity, but on the hill or in
other regions with high soil resistivity.
High grounding resistance would affect the safe operation of
power system. Several various methods had been applied to de-
crease the grounding resistance of the grounding system. Reg-
ular methods include enlarging the grounding grid, connecting
the main grounding grid with a subsidiary external grounding
grid, increasing the burial depth of the grounding grid, utilizing
natural grounding object such as steel foundations of structures,
adding long vertical grounding electrodes, and changing the
soils around the grounding grid with low resistivity materials.
These methods are suitable for different geographical situations
but that does not mean they should be taken up independently.
In fact, in a specific soil environment, two or more methods
should be taken up to decrease the grounding resistance effec-
tively. The method to add deep vertical grounding electrodes to
the grounding grid is very effective especially in urban substa-
tions with small area. This method can utilize the low-resistivity
soil layer and eliminate the seasonal influence. In order to de-
crease the grounding resistance, a special method was proposed
to decrease the grounding resistance of grounding grids in high
resistivity area, it was called as explosive grounding technique
[2]. This method has been verified very effectively in China, and
now it has been applied in about 30 grounding projects. The only
shortcoming of the explosive grounding technique is the high
engineering cost.
The paper introduced a novel method to decrease the grounding
resistance of substation by adding deep-well grounding elec-
trodes (simply called as deep ground well) to the grounding
grid, its principle and application were presented.
II. PRINCIPLE OF DEEP GROUND WELL TO DECREASE
GROUNDING RESISTANCE
A. Influence of Water on Soil Resistivity
As discussed in [2], the key to decrease the grounding resis-
tance of substation is changing the soil resistivity around the
grounding system, because the grounding resistance of substa-
tion is mainly determined by the resistivity of the soil region
around the grounding system.
The resistivity of soil in nature is decided by the water con-
tent, the property and the density of the electrolyte solution,
which has the characteristics of ion conduction. Ordinary, the
resistivity of the soil with much water is small, and the resistivity
of the dry soil is high. The experimental result of clay sample
states its resistivity changes very quickly when the water content
is smaller than 10 percent. When the water content of the clay
HE et al.: DECREASING GROUNDING RESISTANCE OF SUBSTATION BY DEEP-GROUND-WELL METHOD
Fig. 1. Principle diagram of water well.
sample is 2.5 percent, its tested resistivity is 1400 m, but when
its water content increases to 10 percent, its tested resistivity de-
creases to 200 m, and when its water content increases to 25
percent, its tested resistivity decreases to 15 m.
In southern China, the deep soil is moisture, and contains
groundwater, so the resistivity of the deep soil is small.
B. Principle of Deep Ground Well to Decrease
Grounding Resistance
As analyzed above, the water content is a very important
factor to decrease the resistivity of soil, the higher the humidity
is, the lower the soil resistivity is. Whether can we increase the
water content of soil around grounding electrodes to decrease
the grounding resistance?
As we know, if we dig a well in the earth, then groundwater
would move to the well. The principle of a ware well can be ex-
plained by Fig. 1, in the soil plane with depth of , the pressure
on the sidewall of the well is the atmospheric pressure, the
pressure on a groundwater molecule in the soil with depth
is the atmospheric pressure plus the soil pressure in the location
with depth , it is obvious
So, the groundwater molecule would move to the well due
to the pressure difference, then groundwater would be accumu-
lated in the well, and a big soil region near the water well is full
of water, so the resistivity of soil region full of groundwater is
low. If we construct a metal tube electrode as the sidewall of the
water well, then the metal tube electrode has low grounding re-
sistance. In order to keep the pressure difference to lead water
into the interior of the metal tube, a lot of small holes must be
drilled on the tube.
During the moving process of the groundwater toward the
well, the drag force would be met in the soil. So, the final water
level in the well is determined by the balance between the pres-
sure difference and the drag force, this is a dynamic balance
process related to the groundwater content.
Overall, the principle of deep-ground-well method is to de-
crease grounding resistance by deep wells to change the moving
directions of groundwater in the soil surrounding the grounding
electrode, and use the gravity water, capillary water and va-
porous water in groundwater to increase the humidity of the
soil surrounding the grounding electrode, which will decrease
the soil resistivity and consequently decrease the grounding re-
sistance of the grounding electrode.
739
Fig. 2. Soil region with saturated water formed by deep ground well.
Fig. 3. Soil region with saturated water formed by deep ground well when the
deep well touches the soil layer with saturated water.
C. Underground Water
Ordinarily, there are different kinds of air gaps not only in
hard rocks but also in incompact sedimentary soil, they pro-
vide the necessary space for the storage and movement of the
groundwater in soil. Groundwater is reserved in pores of dif-
ferent rocks, and among gaps of soil particles, which is one link
of natural water circulation. The groundwater in pores of dif-
ferent rocks exists in different states, such as hydration water
(including held water, pellicular water), gravitative water, cap-
illary water, solid-state water, vaporous water [3]. The ground-
water is supplemented by rainwater.
According to different states of groundwater, the soil can be
treated as dry soil layer, wetting soil layer, and saturated water
layer.
The existence of groundwater provides the essential condi-
tion to decrease the grounding resistance of a grounding elec-
trode. Deep wells are the most effective method to gather the
groundwater, and it is a feasible method to utilize deep wells to
decrease grounding resistances.
D. Influence of Deep Well on the Humidity of the
Soil Region Around the Deep Well
If the deep ground well does not touch the soil layer with
saturated water, or there is not a soil layer with saturated water,
the groundwater moves into the interior of the deep well, and
a soil region around the well is saturated with water as shown
in Fig. 2, the isohume is drawn in the figure, the humidity of
the soil near the deep well is high. In the soil region far away
from the deep well, the deep water well can not affect the soil
humidity in this region.
If the deep ground well touches the soil layer with saturated
water as illustrated in Fig. 3, a larger soil region with saturated
water would be formed by deep ground well.
740
Fig. 4. Sketch diagram of groundwater movement.
III. MECHANISM ANALYSIS OF DEEP GROUND WELL TO
DECREASE GROUNDING RESISTANCE
The mechanism that the deep ground well has small
grounding resistance is summarized in the following.
A. Leading the Groundwater Moving to the Deep Ground Well
As discussed above, the pressure difference between the side-
wall of the wall and the groundwater leads groundwater moving
toward the deep well, and gathering in the interior of the deep
well. This pressure difference maintains the energy of ground-
water motion toward the deep well. As shown in Fig. 3, if there
is a soil layer with saturated water, then the water would pass
through the small holes in the steel tube and accumulate inside
the well (indicated by a in Fig. 4), in the meantime, the accu-
mulated water inside the well would pass through the tube, and
move outside the well from its interior to moisture the dry soil
region around the deep ground well (indicated by b in Fig. 4),
and forms isohume as shown in Figs. 2 and 3, the humidity near
the deep ground well is high. At last, the movement of the water
forms a dynamic balance related to the groundwater change,
and a soil region around the well with high humidity is formed.
But in raining season, rainwater would disperse into soil, so this
balance would be destroyed, and then a new balance would be
formed.
If there is an impermeable layer above the groundwater layer
in the soil, the water level would exceed it under the pressure,
and wet the soil above it and fill the pores of this impermeable
layer; or the groundwater directly passes through this imperme-
able layer from its pores under pressure as for artesian well. So,
this deep ground well can be applied in any region with ground-
water.
B. Forming Low-Resistivity Channel Connecting With Soil
Layer With Saturated Water
If there is a soil layer with saturated water, the groundwater
in this soil layer would move to the deep ground well, and
form a saturated region with water, this region contacts with the
deep ground well and with the soil layer with saturated water,
it forms a low-resistivity channel between them, as shown in
Fig. 5. When a fault current is injected into the deep ground
well, it would easily disperse into soil through this low-resis-
tivity channel and the soil layer with saturated water.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005
Fig. 5. Forming low-resistivity channel connecting with the soil layer
containing saturated water.
Fig. 6. Influence of vertical pores (a) in dry soil and (b) with groundwater, and
horizontal pores (c) in dry soil and (d) with groundwater on current dispersion.
C. Forming Low-Resistivity Groundwater
Soil contains different mineral substances, and these min-
eral substances hold different ions. During the movement of
the groundwater toward the deep ground well, these ions are
dissolved in the groundwater. So, the groundwater has good
conductivity, and the moist soil region formed around the deep
ground well has low resistivity.
D. Filling the Soil Pores With Water
If there are pores in dry soil as shown in Fig. 6(a) and (c),
which would affect the current dispersing into soil from the
grounding electrode, the current must round the pores. But these
soil pores in the nearby region around the deep ground well
would be filled with groundwater, then the current can directly
pass through these pores as shown in Fig. 6(b) and (d), the cur-
rent dispersing resistance is decreased.
On the other hand, the deep ground well sometimes can con-
tact with or puncture through a low-resistivity soil layer, then
fault current can directly disperse into this low-resistivity soil
layer.
IV. FIELD INSTALLATION OF DEEP GROUND WELL
As illustrated in Fig. 7(a), during the field installation of the
deep ground well, firstly a vertical hole is drilled in the soil. Or-
dinarily, stainless steel tube or galvanized steel tube is adopted
as the grounding electrode, its diameter is about 50 mm, small
holes are arranged on the tube for groundwater through the tube.
HE et al.: DECREASING GROUNDING RESISTANCE OF SUBSTATION BY DEEP-GROUND-WELL METHOD
Fig. 7. Schematic diagram of (a) deep-ground-well and (b) connection of two
steel tubes for deep-ground-well.
The steel tube is inserted into the drilled hole. A deep ground
well is connected by several short steel tubes, two short tubes are
connected together by straight fitting, and the connecting region
is welded as shown in Fig. 7(b). The gap between the sidewall
of the drilled hole and the steel tube is filled with carbon powder
with very low resistivity by pressure. The filled carbon powder
has good water absorbability, which can keep itself and neigh-
boring soil in humidified state. On the other hand, the carbon
powder has good permeability, the groundwater can easily move
inside the ground well through it. In order to impede the carbon
powder into the steel tube, special filtering film is used to cover
these permeable holes on the steel tube. Other materials, such
as fine loess or bentonite, can be used to fill the gap between
the sidewall of the drilled hole and the steel tube. The top of the
steel tube to the ground is 1 m, a small aeration hole is left to
keep the pressure in the well is the air pressure.
V. APPLICATION OF DEEP GROUND WELL
A. Description of the Engineering
The proposed deep-ground-well method was applied in the
grounding system reconstruction engineering of 110-kV Luohu
Substation in Heyuan city, Guandong Province, China, where
belongs to southern China, there is abundant groundwater
resource.
The 110-kV Luohu Substation locates in hill region, the old
substation grounding grid was built in September 1984, and
the original area of this grounding grid is about 90 90 m ,
the tested grounding resistance is 1.79 . In 1989, the area of
this grounding grid was enlarged to 90 120 m , in the mean-
time, horizontal grounding electrodes were added to connect
the grounding devices of transmission lines together, as illus-
trated in Fig. 8, the added area is about 3000 m , and the tested
grounding resistance was 1.35 .
The grounding system of 110-kV Luohu Substation was re-
built in the end of 1999 by applying this novel deep-ground-well
method. The schematic diagram of the grounding system with
the deep ground well for 110-kV Luohu Substation is shown in
Fig. 8. Ten deep ground wells were added, the lengths of these
ten deep ground wells are in the range between 11 m to 15 m.
In order to decrease the shielding effect of the grounding grid
to vertical deep grounding wells, they are arranged around the
741
Fig. 8. Schematic diagram of the grounding system with the deep ground well
for 110-kV Luohu Substation.
substation. The total lengths of these 10 deep ground wells are
130 m, and total lengths of those horizontal grounding electrode
to connect the deep ground wells with the grounding grid are
about 600 m.
B. Field Installation Method
A drilling machine was used to drill the hole for a deep ground
well; the diameter of the drilled holes is 150 mm. Galvanized
steel tubes with inner diameter of 40 mm and thickness of 5 mm
were used as the grounding electrode of deep ground well. Water
permeating holes were drilled uniformly on the steel tube. A
deep ground well has several segments of short steel tubes with
a length of about 6 m, and short steel tubes were connected
together by connecting straight fittings.
Fine carbon powders with good conductivity were filled into
the gaps between the steel tube and the drilled hole by high
pressure to ensure carbon powder having good contact with the
steel tube and the surrounding soil.
C. Measuring Results and Analysis
The reconstructing engineering was fulfilled in December
1999. After one month, the grounding resistances of all ten
deep ground wells were measured. Before measurement, the
connecting conductors between the grounding grid and the
ground well were untied; the measured results of all ten deep
ground wells were shown in Table I.
The apparent soil resistivity data under different electrode
span by Wenner four-electrode configuration were measured
[4], too. The measured results in the west and south of sub-
station are different from the results measured in the north-east
of substation, The average data were shown in Fig. 9; the ana-
lyzed results show the soil geological structure of substation can
be handled as 3 horizontal layers, the resistivity and thickness
of the first layer is 112.50 m and 2.05 m, the resistivity and
thickness of the second layer is 452.50 m and 4.50 m, the re-
sistivity of the third soil layer is 161.50 m.
742
TABLE I
GROUNDING RESISTANCE TESTED RESULTS OF TEN DEEP GROUND WELLS
Fig. 9. Relationship between the apparent soil resistivity and the test electrode
span by Wenner four-electrode configuration.
Fig. 10. Geological structure of the substation area.
According to the soil drilled out, the first 2 m soil is black
sandy one, then gravel soil layer and loess layer with thickness
of 3 to 5 m appear alternately as shown in Fig. 10. Below the
second gravel soil layer, the soil is moist. The gravel soil layer is
full of apertures, which has very good capability to keep water.
The first loess layer is close-grained, which prevents the ground-
water volatilized.
Before adding these ten deep ground wells, the grounding re-
sistance of the grounding grid is 1.35 , and the area is about
11 000 m , so the estimated equivalent resistivity is 283.2 m.
After these ten deep ground wells were added to the grounding
grid, the tested grounding resistance is 0.5 by the fall-of-po-
tential method [4], this value keeps unchanged in every year rou-
tine test. The total area of the grounding system is about 14 600
m , the respective equivalent resistivity decreases to about 120.8
m. Comparing with the 1.35 , the grounding resistance is de-
creased about 63%. These deep-ground-wells are very powerful
to decrease grounding resistance.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005
Fig. 11.Equivalent low-resistivity region of deep ground well with the shape of
(a) cylinder and semi-sphere in the bottom and (b) cylinder.
TABLE II
ANALYZED WIDTH OF EQUIVALENT LOW-RESISTIVITY REGION
VI. ESTIMATION OF EQUIVALENT LOW-RESISTIVITY REGION
FORMED BY DEEP GROUND WELL
The deep ground well can be treated as a vertical grounding
electrode with low-resistivity region around it, which can be
modeled by a cylinder region, the bottom region is modeled as
a semi-sphere region as shown in Fig. 11(a). But the grounding
resistance of this equivalent model is difficultly calculated. So,
a cylinder region is used to simulate the low-resistivity region
around the deep ground well as shown in Fig. 11(b), is the
diameter of the steel tube, and is the equivalent width of the
low-resistivity region.
The grounding resistance of a deep ground well can be calcu-
lated by numerical analysis software package according to the
horizontal multi-layer soil model analyzed above. The CDEGS
software package was used in our analysis [5]. The resistivity
in the equivalent cylinder soil region is supposed as 0, the ana-
lyzed results of deep-ground-well’s (DGW’s) equivalent width
are illustrated in Table II. The analyzed equivalent width is in
the range of 0.26 m to 2.04 m, and the average width is 1.44 m.
So the diameter of the equivalent region with low-resistivity is
0.57 to 4.13 m, and the average diameter is 2.93 m. The diam-
eter of the ground well is 50 mm, then the equivalent diameters
are 11.4 to 40.8 times of that of the ground well.
A. Equivalent Soil Resistivity of Deep Ground Well
As discussed above, the deep ground well can be analyzed as
a vertical grounding electrode, if the soil is regarded as uniform,
then the equivalent resistivity of each deep ground well can be
calculated by [4]
HE et al.: DECREASING GROUNDING RESISTANCE OF SUBSTATION BY DEEP-GROUND-WELL METHOD
TABLE III
EQUIVALENT SOIL RESISTIVITIES OF TEN GROUND WELLS
TABLE IV
ANALYZED GROUNDING RESISTANCE OF POPULAR VERTICAL
GROUNDING ELECTRODES
where, is the grounding resistance of a deep ground well,
and are the radius and length of the deep ground well. If the
analyzed equivalent resistivity from a ground well is smaller
than that from another one, then this ground well has better ef-
fect to decrease grounding resistance. The equivalent soil resis-
tivities of ten ground wells are analyzed and shown in Table III,
which are much smaller than the soil resistiviy analyzed from
field test results. The reason is that the effect of soil region with
saturated water had been considered into it.
There is not water gathered in no. 5 deep ground well, so its
equivalent resistivity is higher than those of other deep ground
wells, but it is still much smaller than the equivalent resistivity
obtained from the grounding resistance of grounding system.
The reason is that the deep ground well leads the groundwater
moving to it, although there is not water gathered in the well,
but the humidity of the soil around it increases.
B. Comparison With Popular Vertical Grounding Electrode
According to the multi-layer soil model analyzed above, if
these deep ground wells were popular vertical grounding elec-
trodes, their respective grounding resistance would be analyzed
by numerical analysis software package. Where, the popular
vertical grounding electrode means a grounding rod with the
same length and diameter of the ground well. The analyzed re-
sults are illustrated in Table IV, the grounding resistances of
popular vertical grounding electrodes with the same diameter
of the deep ground well are 1.57 to 3.27 times of those of deep
ground wells. So, the deep ground well can effectively decrease
grounding resistance.
The measured grounding resistance of the rebuilt substation
after ten deep grounding wells were added to the grounding grid
is 0.5 . If the grounding resistance of this substation grounding
743
grid should be decreased to 0.5 by these ten popular vertical
grounding electrodes, then all their length should be 40 m,
this shows the deep-ground-well is powerful in decreasing
grounding resistance of substation. For the grounding system
with deep-ground-wells in Fig. 8, the numerically analyzed
grounding resistance of the grounding system is 0.528 , which
is very close to 0.5 measured by field test.
C. Application Range of Deep Ground Well
The principle of the deep ground well is to lead groundwater
moving to it, so the deep ground well method can only be used
in the region with groundwater. If there is not groundwater, it
can only be regarded as a popular vertical grounding electrode.
VII. CONCLUSION
Grounding system is very important to maintain the safe and
reliable operation of power network and ensure the safety of
power apparatus and operators. On the basis of summarizing
the advanced grounding technologies, a new grounding tech-
nique is proposed, which makes use of deep well to decrease
the grounding resistance of substation.
There are different kinds of air gaps not only in hard rocks
but also in incompact sedimentary soil, which provide the nec-
essary space for the storage and movement of the groundwater
in soil, and the essential condition for utilizing the groundwater
to decrease grounding resistance of a grounding electrode. Deep
well is the most effective method to gather the groundwater. It
is a feasible method to utilize deep well to decrease grounding
resistance of a grounding electrode.
Utilizing deep wells to decrease grounding resistance is
mainly to use deep wells to change the moving directions of
groundwater in the soil surrounding the grounding electrodes,
and use the gravity water, capillary water and vaporous water
in groundwater to increase the humidity of the soil surrounding
the grounding electrode, which will decrease the soil resistivity
near the grounding substation and consequently decrease the
grounding resistance of the grounding electrode.
The deep ground wells use steel tubes as the electrodes.
These steel tubes must meet the demand of related standards
of grounding devices in power system, such as mechanical
robustness and the anti-corrosive capability. A lot of water
percolation apertures are drilled on the steel tube, these steel
tubes have the ability to gather the groundwater and wet the
surrounding soil. So they are not only grounding conductors
but also solid sidewalls of deep wells.
The field experiment of deep-well grounding electrode is per-
formed with the reconstruction of the ground grids for a 110-kV
substation. The experimental results indicate that the design of
grounding electrodes can effectively make use of the ground-
water to decrease the grounding resistance. The diameter of the
equivalent region with low-resistivity obtained from numerical
analysis with multi-layer soil model is 0.57 m to 4.13 m, and the
average diameter is 2.93 m. The diameter of the ground well is
50 mm, then the equivalent diameters are 11.4 to 40.8 times of
that of the ground well. We can conclude that the deep ground
wells are suitable for the soil with some content of ground-
water, good permeability and big void fraction, especially with
multi-layer structure.
744 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005

REFERENCES Rong Zeng (M’02) was born in Shaanxi, China, in 1971. He received the B.Sc.,
M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Ts-
[1] IEEE Guide for Safety in AC Substation Grounding, IEEE Standard
inghua University, Beijing, respectively, in 1995, 1997, and 1999.
80-2000, 2000. He became a Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua
[2] Q. B. Meng, J. L. He, F. P. Dawalibi, and J. Ma, “A new methods to de-
University, in August 1999, and an Associate Professor in the same depart-
crease ground resistances of substation grounding systems in high resis- ment, Tsinghua University in December 2002. His research interests include
tivity regions,” IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 911–916, high voltage technology, grounding technology, power electronics, and distri-
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[3] G. H. Li, Z. C. Liu, and X. Zhang, Water Resource Application and Man-
agement Engineering. Beijing, China: Tsinghua Univ. Press, 1998.
[4] IEEE Guide for Measuring Earth Resistivity, Ground Impedance, and
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[5] F. P. Dawalibi and F. Donoso, “Integrated analysis software for
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2, pp. 19–24, 1993.

Bo Zhang was born in Datong, China, in 1976. He received the B.Sc. and
Ph.D. degrees in theoretical electrical engineering from the North China Elec-
Jinliang He (M’02–SM’02) was born in Changsha, China, in 1966. He tric Power University, Baoding, in 1998 and 2003, respectively.
received the B.Sc. degree from Wuhan University of Hydraulic and Electrical Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Electrical En-
Engineering, Wuhan, China, the M.Sc. degree from Chongqing University, gineering at Tsinghua University. His research interests include computational
Chongqing, China, and the Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, electromagnetics, grounding technology, and EMC in power systems.
China, all in electrical engineering, in 1988, 1991, and 1994, respectively.
He became a Lecturer in 1994, and an Associate Professor in 1996, in the De-
partment of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University. From 1994 to 1997, he
was the Head of High Voltage Laboratory in Tsinghua University. From April
1997 to April 1998, he was a Visiting Scientist in Korea Electrotechnology
Research Institute in Changwon, Korea, involved in research on metal oxide
varistors and high voltage polymeric metal oxide surge arresters. In 2001, he
was promoted to Professor at Tsinghua University. Now he is the Vice Chief
of High Voltage Research Institute in Tsinghua University. His research inter-
ests include overvoltages and EMC in power systems and electronic systems, Jun Zou was born in Wuhan, China, in 1971. He received the B.S. and M.S.
grounding technology, power apparatus, dielectric material, and power distribu- degrees from Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, in July 1994
tion automation. He is the authors of four books and many technical papers. and July 1997, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University in
Dr. He is a senior member of China Electrotechnology Society, and a Beijing, in July 2001, all in electrical engineering.
member of the International Compumag Society. He is the China representative He became a lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua
of IEC TC 81, vice chief of China Lightning Protection Standardization Tech- University in Beijing in August 2001. His research fields include computational
nology Committee, and members of Electromagnetic Interference Protection electromagnetics and EMC.
Committee and Transmission Line Committee of China Power Electric Society,
member of China Surge Arrester Standardization Technology Committee, and
member of Overvoltage and Insulation Coordination Standardization Tech-
nology Committee and Surge Arrester Standardization Technology Committee
in Electric Power Industry. He is the chief editor of the Journal of Lightning
Protection and Standardization (in Chinese).

Gang Yu was born in Shandong, China, in 1961. He received the B.Sc. degree
from Shandong University of Technology, in 1972, and the M.Eng. degree from
China Electric Power Research Institute in 1998. He is doing part-time research
for a Ph.D. degree in Tsinghua University.
Now he is Deputy President of China Power Engineering Consulting (Group).
His research field includes power system design, electromagnetic environment
of power system, and grounding technology.
Jingping Yuan was born in Heyuan, Guangdong, China, in 1966. He received
the B.Sc. from the Department of Electrical Engineering, South China Univer-
sity of Technology, Guangzhou, July 1988, and the M.Eng. from the Department
of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, in 2002.
He is now a Senior Engineer in Heyuan Electric Power Company, Guang-
dong, China. His research interests include high voltage technology, grounding
technology, power electronics and distribution system automation, and power
system management.
Zhicheng Guan was born in Jilin, China, in 1944. He received the B.Sc.,
M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, respectively in 1970, 1981, and 1984.
From 1984 to 1987, he was a Lecturer and the Director of High Voltage Lab-
oratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University. From
1988 to 1989, he was a visiting Scholar in University of Manchester Institute
of Science and Technology (UMIST), U.K. From 1989 to 1991, he was an As-
sociate Professor and the Director of High Voltage Laboratory. In 1991, he was
promoted to a Professor of Tsinghua University. From 1992 to 1993, he was the
Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University. From
1993 to 1994, he was the Assistant President of Tsinghua University, and from
1994 to 1999, he was the vice President of Tsinghua University, and since March
1999, he has been the Vice President of Tsinghua University Council. His major
research fields include high voltage insulation and electrical discharge, com-
posite insulators and flashover of contaminated insulators, electrical environ-
ment technology, high voltage measurement, and application of plasma and high
voltage technology in biological and environment engineering. He owns many
titles in academic societies. He is the author of more than 150 academic papers.

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