Environmental Engineering and Management Journal

April 2011, Vol.10, No. 4, 499-504

http://omicron.ch.tuiasi.ro/EEMJ/

Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi, Romania

HUMAN EXPOSURE TO POWER FREQUENCY ELECTRIC FIELD INSIDE VERY HIGH VOLTAGE SUBSTATIONS
Ioan T. Pop1, Vasile Topa1, Calin Munteanu1, Adina Racasan1, Emil Merdan2
1

Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Department of Electrotechnics, 26-28 G. Baritiu Street, 400027 Cluj-Napoca, Romania 2 Electrica Distributie Transilvania Nord Electricity Distribution Company, 28A I. Macelaru Street, 4010380 Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Abstract
This paper outlines the most recent developments regarding the electric field distribution analysis inside very high voltage substations. The study was performed in order to develop and validate a powerful computation tool able to determine and predict the substation zones where the occupational exposure limits exceeds the admissible values imposed by the legislation. The study cases proposed in the paper are taken from the Romanian national power grid but the conclusions and the mitigation ideas outlined can be directly extended to substations belonging to other national or local power grids. In the first part of the paper the principles and methods proposed by the authors for the electric field computation in the vicinity of the power devices composing a very high voltage substation are outlined. The validation of the computation module implemented was done by comparisons with detailed experimental measurements results performed inside a new rehabilitated 400 kV substation. The evaluation of the results outlines a good agreement between the computed and measured electric field values inside the analyzed substation. This fact motivates the usage of the computation module developed in the design of the future high voltage substations in the light of fulfilling the actual regulations regarding the human exposure to power electric fields. In the second part of the paper scenarios to reduce the field values inside the future designed or rehabilitated substations are proposed and examined. The final conclusions end the paper. Key words: computation, electric field, HV substations, measurements, mitigation techniques
Received: December, 2010; Revised final: March, 2011; Accepted: April, 2011

1. Introduction It is well known that in case of high and very high voltage (HV) substations the electric field generated by the HV equipments exceeds for large areas the professional exposure limits imposed by the actual legislation (CIGRE, 2009; Fonseca et al., 1999; Krawczyk, 2008). For this reason, the paper proposed by the authors focuses first on the analysis and second on the techniques of mitigation of the electric field distribution inside substations. The exposure limits to electromagnetic fields are quantified in EU member states by two documents. The most important one, the 2004/20/EC EU Directive (EC Directive, 2004) refers to the

minimal requirements on health and security of working personnel exposure to the electromagnetic fields. Since this Directive is an individual Directive within the meaning of Article 16(1) of Council Directive 89/391/EEC of 12 June 1989 on the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers at work, that Directive therefore applies to the exposure of workers to electromagnetic fields, without prejudice to more stringent and/or specific provisions contained in this Directive. The second document is the 1999/519/EC EU Council Recommendation on the limitation of exposure of the general public to electromagnetic fields (CR, 1999). Both above mentioned documents have been transposed in the Romanian legislation by

Author to whom all correspondence should be addressed: e-mail: Calin.Munteanu@et.utcluj.ro; Phone: +40-264-401244; Fax: +40-264-592903

Pop et al./Environmental Engineering and Management Journal 10 (2011), 4, 499-504

direct translation into two governmental documents (GD, 2006). Following these documents, considering the 50 Hz power frequency, the public exposure to the electric field is limited at 5 kV/m while the occupational exposure the limit is 10 kV/m. These limits were particularly checked during the study performed and detailed in the work. The paper has in two main parts. The first part emphasizes the electric field distribution inside substations obtained using a semi-analytical field computation module developed by the authors. Comparison with experimental measurements are presented and discussed in order to validate the accuracy of the field computation algorithm developed and also to validate the experimental measurements data. In the second part of the paper scenarios to mitigate the electric field values inside high voltage substations are proposed. Their efficiency is discussed and the main conclusions are outlined. The study presented in this paper was carried out in two of the substations belonging to the Romanian Power Grid Company Transelectrica S.A. The first studied substation, the 400/220 kV substation named Rosiori, interconnects the Romanian power grid with the EU power grid via the Mukacevo substation from Ukraine. This substation, recently rehabilitated, was used for extensive electric field measurements. The measured field values were compared with those calculated using the computation algorithm developed. The second substation, the 220/110 kV Campia Turzii substation, was selected for the analysis of the proposed electric field mitigation strategies efficiency. The substation is nowadays involved in a rehabilitation process so the newly designed substation has to respect the requirements of the actual legislation regarding the occupational exposure to electromagnetic fields. The most important conclusions about the study performed will end the paper. 2. Material and methods The computation of the electric field values inside a substation is a difficult task due to the complexity of the power devices geometrical structure and of the conductors arrangements (Lattarulo, 2007). Therefore, in order to determine the field distribution inside a substation, full 3D computation algorithms must be developed. For this purpose, the authors set-up a semi-analytical field computation algorithm written in Mathematica programming environment. The main idea for the electric field computation is to model the whole structure of the substation by straight finite length conductor segments. Curved conductor lines of various shapes are therefore segmented with set of straight line segments in xyz coordinate system that contribute to the resultant field in points of the space. Thus, any

segment of the final equivalent geometrical structure of the substation will play a part to the electric field strength global computation formula (Krajewski, 2004, 2009). The computation algorithm developed is based on a semi-analytical computation method and consists in two main steps: In the fist step the thin conductors charge density distributions are numerically evaluated such that every conductor segment to be maintained at the given constant potential; In the second step the total electric field strength is determined by adding the contribution of each conductor segment of the substation (Neff, 1991) based on the following general vector formula:

e 3 E = 4

2 m

k =1

Lk

L k 1

r1 k r2 k 3 3 dl r2 k r1 k (1)

In Eq. 1 the quantity rk is the electric charge density assumed to be constant on a small piece of the conductor segment, located between the segment limits Lk-1 and Lk, while rk are the position vectors from the source segment and its image with respect to earth respectively to the computation point. The complex exponential in Eq. 1 assures the conductors phase. 3. Case-studies presentation The developed electric field computation algorithm was used to determine the electric field strength distribution in the 400 kV part of the Rosiori substation. In order to achieve the data for the graphical representation, 41151 computation nodes were used and a total computation time of 8 hours was necessary. The computation results are compared with the experimental measurements performed in the substation (Munteanu et al., 2009; Munteanu et al., 2010). One has to outline that in order to perform the experimental measurements about 1800 data acquisition points were considered in a grid covering the whole surface of the 400 kV region of the substation. The field measurements have been performed going along the columns direction of these grids (meaning the direction perpendicular to the direction of the power lines entering the substation). The maximum distance between two adjacent measurement columns was 10 m while the distance between two adjacent test points on a measurement line was 3m. The measurement lines have been selected such way that they passed in closed vicinity to the main power equipments. The field meter device was mounted on a special shear leg device (HI, 2002). In order to avoid the influence of the personnel presence during the data acquisition for the electric field measurements, a

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remote control device connected with the field meter via a 3 m long fiber optic cable was used. For electric field measurements the field meters measuring loop was set horizontally. All the results are considered for 1.7 m height above the soil. This height was considered based on the known health effects of the power frequency electromagnetic field on humans (CIGRE, 2009). Therefore, the human head was considered as the most exposed part of the human body to the electromagnetic field. The computation and the experimental results are presented in Fig. 1. Fig. 2 emphasizes the areas where the electric field strength exceeds the 10 kV/m, the occupational exposure limit. As it can be noticed from Fig. 1, there is much similarity between the computed and measured electric field distribution inside the substation. The highest field value computed is 26.6 kV/m while the highest field value measured was 22.7 kV/m. There is 15% deviation between these data results. This deviation can be explained first of all by the fact that the computed and measured maximum values are not located in the same point. On have to outline that for the computation results there are used 23 times more points than the number of measurements points so the computation grid is much finer than de measurement grid. In order to prove this idea, a measurement line in the vicinity of the Bus-bar 1 was selected to more accurately compare the computed and the measured data. The corresponding shapes of the computed and measured electric field distribution along this line are presented in Fig. 2. One can notice the very good agreement between the two shapes. The maximum computed field value is in this case 24.1 kV/m while the maximum measured field value is 22.7 kV/m, which means a deviation of only 6%. This deviation is very suitable for the purpose of this kind of study. Looking to the exposure limits, Fig. 3 outline the areas where the 10 kV/m limit goes over. One can notice that there are large areas inside substation where the occupational exposure limit is exceeded. The highest field values were found in the neighbourhood of the line bays and bus-bars circuit breakers and disconnectors, where the 400 kV potential goes down to about 6.5 m above soil.

(a) computation result

(b) experimental measurements result

Fig. 1. The electric field distribution in the 400 kV region of the Rosiori substation

4. Results and discussion As it can be noticed from Fig. 2, in case of the Rosiori substation, the occupational exposure limit is exceeded on the relay cabinet access roads. This is an important aspect that motivates the analysis of scenarios to reduce the field value inside high voltage substations. The first scenario proposed in this paper is what would happen if all the Rosiori substation power equipments would be elevated with a certain value, for instance with 2 meters. A comparison between the actual situation and the results for the scenario proposed are presented in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, by using the computation algorithm developed. As it can be noticed from Figs. 3 and 4, there is a significant reduction of the areas where the field values exceeds the 10 kV/m occupational exposure limit. On the other hand, comparing the maximum field values computed in both cases, one notices a decrease from 26.6 kV/m to 18.9 kV/m, which means a significant reduction of 29 %.
Electric field in the vicinity of the bus-bar 1 [kV/m]
25

20

15

10

0 0 9 18 27 36 45 54 63 72 81 90 99 108 117 126

Distance [m]

(a) computation result

(b) experimental measurements result

Fig. 2. The computed electric field values along Bus-Bar 1, on a measurement line

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Pop et al./Environmental Engineering and Management Journal 10 (2011), 4, 499-504

(a) actual situation

(a) actual situation

(b) elevation with 2 meters of all equipments

(b) elevation with 2 meters

Fig. 3. Comparison between the actual field distribution and the case of 2 meters elevation of all power equipments inside 400 kV part of the Rosiori substation

Fig. 5. Electric field distribution along the access road 1 inside substation

(a) actual situation

(b) elevation with 2 meters of all equipments

Fig. 4. Areas with field values higher than 10 kV/m inside 400 kV part of the Rosiori substation

The electric field distribution along the two access roads to the relay cabinets are presented in Fig. 5, considering the actual situation and for the proposed scenario. The field reduction on the access roads to the relay cabinets is of about 13 %, form the maximum value 13 kV/m to 11.4 kV/m. The second scenario refers to the 220 / 110 kV Campia Turzii substation which is in process of rehabilitation.

The electric field distribution according to the proposed design for the 200 kV part of the future rehabilitated substation is presented in Fig. 6. As expected, the electric field values computed are much lower than in the case of the 400 kV substation, the maximal value being 14.1 kV/m. Also the areas where the values go beyond the 10 kV/m limit are very much restricted around the circuit breakers and disconnectors. Fig. 7 presents the areas where the field values exceed 10 kV/m. As one can notice from Fig. 7, there is no exceeding of the occupational exposure limit along any road inside the substation (the maximal value found does not go over 5 kV/m). This fact motivated the following study scenario: what would happen if the substation spans height would be reduced from the actual value 17 m to the level of 12.5 m (a decrease of 4.5 m)? This height reduction would be of much help from implementation costs point of view for the new rehabilitated substation. The result is presented in Fig. 8 in the form of the difference between the values computed for the initial case and for the scenario case. As it can be noticed from Fig. 8, the maximal deviation of the field values in case of the proposed scenario does not exceed 1.1 kV /m with respect to the initial situation. In fact, the spans height reduction does not change the maximal exposure value found along the substation roads, which remains less than 5 kV/m. The interesting thing to be observed from Fig. 8 is that the reduction of the spans height may lead for certain regions inside the substation to the reduction of the electric field values. This remark must be carefully checked in the future because it could help the designer to establish optimal arrangement of the

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Plants as indicators of environmental conditions of urban spaces from central parks of Bucharest

equipment heights in order to minimise the field values especially along the substations roads.

Fig. 6. The electric field distribution in the 220 kV region of the Campia Turzii substation

field is significantly exceeded in large areas of the 400 kV substations. This situation is motivated mainly by the fact that the circuit breakers and disconnectors force the high voltage to come down to about 6.5 m above the soil. Using the computation algorithm developed, a scenario considering the power devices elevation with 2 meters was proposed. The results emphasize that the field values may decrease significantly using this method. The third important conclusion is that the field computation tool developed is of much help in the design of new substations. Using the software module, different scenarios of power devices arrangements may be analysed in order to reduce as much as possible the field strength and especially on the access roads inside substations. Moreover, the computation module developed makes possible the analysis of the electromagnetic interferences produced by the high voltage substation to the neighbouring utilities such as gas or water pipe networks. Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Post-Doctoral Programme POSDRU/89/1.5/S/57083 PRiDE and by the CNCSIS UEFISCSU, project number PNII IDEI 2539/2008.

Fig. 7. The regions where the electric field distribution exceeds 10 kV/m inside the Campia Turzii substation

References
CIGRE, (2009), Mitigation Techniques of PowerFrequency Magnetic Fields Originated From Electric Power Systems, Technical Brochure CIGRE no. 373, Paris, France. CIGRE, (2009), Technical Guide for Measurement of Low Frequency Electric and Magnetic Fields Near Overhead Power Lines, Technical Brochure CIGRE no. 375, Paris, France. CR, (1999), Council Recommendation of 12 July 1999 on the limitation of exposure of the general public to electromagnetic fields (0 Hz to 300 GHz). EC Directive, (2004), Directive 2004/40/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the minimum health and safety requirements regarding the exposure of workers to the risks arising from physical agents (electromagnetic fields). Fonseca C.A., Fontana E., Naidu S.R., (1999), Electric and magnetic fields of compact transmission lines, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, 14, 200-204. GD, (2006), Governmental Decision no. 1136/30.08.2006, published in Romanian Official Monitor no. 769/11.09.2006. GD, (2006), Governmental Decision no. 1193/29.09.2006, published in Romanian Official Monitor no. 895/03.11.2006. HI, (2002), HI 3604 ELF Survey Meter Users Manual, Holladay Ind. Krajewski W., (2004), Numerical Modeling of the Electric Field in HV Substations, IEE Proceedings online no. 20040565, 267-272. Krajewski W., (2009), Numerical assessment of electromagnetic exposure during live-line works on high-voltage objects, IET Science, Measurement & Technology, 3, 2738. Krawczyk A., (2008), Electromagnetic Field, Health and Environment, IOS Press, Amsterdam, NL.

Fig. 8. The map of the difference between electric field values corresponding to the initial situation and the proposed scenario situation inside the Campia Turzii substation

5. Conclusions The main conclusion of the paper is that using fundamental field computation formulae one can accurately evaluate the electromagnetic field strength distribution produced by high voltage power devices from substations. In order to validate the semi-analytical computation algorithm developed, the results were compared with the measured values collected over the whole area of a test substation. The good agreement between the two field distributions outline the efficiency of the computation method proposed and validates as well the measurement method used in practice. The second important conclusion of the paper is that the occupational exposure limit to the electric

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Lattarulo F., (2007), Electromagnetic Compatibility in Power Systems, Elsevier, London, UK. Munteanu C., Visan G., Pop T.I., Topa V., Merdan E., Racasan A., (2009), Electric and Magnetic Field Distribution inside High and Very High Voltage Substations, Proc. of the 20th International Zurich Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, 277280.

Munteanu C., Visan G., Pop T.I., (2010), electric and magnetic field distribution inside high voltage power substations. numerical modeling and experimental measurements, IEEJ Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 5, 40-45. Neff H.P., (1991), Introductory Electromagnetics, John Wiley & Sons, USA.

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