Ground resistance is one of the most critical parameters in a viewpoint of safety in electrical installations. The accurate estimation of a ground resistance plays a decisive role in design of grounding electrode systems. Also one of the major factors...
Ground resistance is one of the most critical parameters in a viewpoint of safety in electrical installations. The accurate estimation of a ground resistance plays a decisive role in design of grounding electrode systems. Also one of the major factors in the performance evaluation of a constructed grounding system is to obtain a very high accuracy in a ground resistance measurement. An accuracy of 2 percent is more than adequate for general purposes.
International standard IEC 60364 series have been introduced as Korean Industrial Standard(KS) in 2005. KS C IEC 60364-6 provides recommended procedures for measuring the ground resistance in low-voltage electrical installations. However, there is no a detailed explanation of the accuracy of ground resistance measurement in KS C IEC 60364-6 standard. It is necessary to obtain more detailed information on the problems related to the ground resistance measurement in KS C IEC 60364-6. The method for measuring a ground resistance according to KS C IEC60364-6 is based on fall-of-potential method.
The object of this study is to review the validity for measuring a ground resistance according to KS C IEC 60364-6. The results obtained form the ground resistance measuring method according to KS C IEC 60364-6 were compared the data obtained from the method based on 61.8% rule and the theoretical calculation values. Three ground electrode arrangements such as a ground rod, ground grid with 4 meshes and 4-ground rods in parallel, arranged a regular square were examined.
The deviation between the results obtained from the methods according to KS C IEC 60364-6 and 61.8% rule was evaluated as functions of the size of ground electrode and the distance from ground electrode to be measured to current auxiliary electrode in meters. Also the site experiments for measuring the ground rod resistance were performed as functions of the length of ground rod and the distance from the ground rod to current electrode.
As a result the accuracy of ground resistance measurement depends on locating the ground electrode to be measured at remote current electrode, and the ground resistance obtained from the methods according to KS C IEC 60364-6 was less than that obtained from 61.8% rule in all conditions of the size of ground electrode and the ground resistance measurement. Theoretically, the method for measuring the ground resistance based on 61.8% rule gives good measurement accuracy. The deviation between the ground rod resistances obtained from the methods according to KS C IEC 60364-6 and 61.8% rule was less than 3% in all test conditions since the formative region of ground rod resistance is small. The deviation between the ground grid resistances obtained from the methods according to KS C IEC 60364-6 and 61.8% rule was significantly depend on the size of ground grid and the distance from ground electrode to be measured to current auxiliary electrode. The deviation between the ground grid resistances obtained from the methods according to KS C IEC 60364-6 and 61.8% rule was greater than 30% in conditions of the 3030 [m] ground grid and the distance from ground grid center to current electrode 30 [m]. The deviation between the ground resistances obtained from the methods according to KS C IEC 60364-6 and 61.8% rule in same size of ground electrodes was decreased with increasing the distance from ground grid center to current electrode, and it in same condition of ground resistance measurement was increased with increasing the size of ground electrodes. In addition when a distance from ground grid center to current electrode is extended 5.5 time the maximum ground grid dimensions, it is expected that the measurement accuracy is less than 94%. Particularly, when measuring the ground resistance of large ground grid according to KS C IEC 60364-6, the evaluation of measurement error due to the size of ground grid and the distance from ground grid to be measured current auxiliary electrode is required. The results proposed in this thesis are expected to be useful to measure the ground resistance of large-sized grounding electrode systems.