Lightning impulse performances of grounding grids for substations considering soil ionization

When lightning strikes a substation or a transmission tower near the substation, high current generated by the stroke would flow into the grounding grid of the substation and dissipate in the soil. The transient characteristic of the grounding grid is very important to the safe and reliable operation of the power system. A circuit model with a lumped time-variable parameter is proposed to calculate the transient characteristics of a grounding grid under lightning current. The ionization phenomena around the ground conductors in the soil are simulated by means of time-variable parameters under appropriate conditions. The influences of different parameters on the transient characteristics of the grounding grid subjected to lightning impulse current are analyzed and the effective usage area of the grounding grid under lightning is discussed.