Overvoltage Transients in Power Systems EQ When a tower in a transmission line is directly struck by lightning, the voltage drop down the tower will appear across the line insulator. The impedance of the tower will be of concern, and if it exceeds a limiting value, the potential at the cross-arm with respect to earth may attain an alarming value due to the passage of lightning current and may be much higher than the li potential. This may cause a flashover of the line insulator, commonly known as back flashover. Direct strokes to the line produce a rate of rise of voltage of about 100 to as much as 1500 kV/us. The wave shapes of lightning surges are usually unidirectional impulses. The frequency of lightning strokes on a line conductor is a function of the frequency of lightning stroke to ground in the area in question and the height of the line above the ground. 8.3.2 Propagation of Lightning Current and Voltage Along Transmission Lines Any piece of electrical equipment or component possesses resistance, inductance and capacitance, and these parameters are distributed along the length of the component. If the parameters are taken to be distributed in space, then voltage and current in the electrical circuit will have wave nature. In case, the wave length is much larger than the actual length of the component, it is possible to assume with adequate accuracy that the parameters R, L and Care lumped or concentrated, and the behaviour of the system can be found on the basis of the lumped circuit analysis. The approximation is valid when the physical length of the component is less and the circuit is excited from a low frequency source. There are important parts of a power system where this approximation is inadequate. The most striking example is the long transmission line where each metre length is much like every other metre. To analyze the behaviour of such a transmission line against lightning it is imperative to represent it by an electrical network with distributed parameters. For the sake of simplicity and better physical understanding, we will consider a two-wire line and a loss-free line. Losses in lines take place in line resistance (PR loss), leakage conductance of the insulator (V7G) and in corona. Neglect of losses will give a pessimistic picture as far as transient analysis is concerned. Figure 8.3 shows a small element of a transmission line. If the line has an inductance and capacitance of L H/m length and C F/m respectively, an elementary length Ax metre of the line at a distance x from the origin will have inductance and capacitance of LAx and Cx respectively. Lax ee veav x increasing ——> Fig. 8.3 Parameters of an elementary length of a lossless transmission line.An Introduction to High Voliage Engineering Vand 1 shown in Fig. 8.3 will be functions of x and time 1. The Voltage AV and current AJ will be given by | or | AV =— Lar (8.3) ar=—carY (8.4) or In the limit Ax —> 0, Eqs. (8.3) and (8.4) may be written as Ov el (8.5) (8.6) Differentiating Eq. (8.5) with respect to x and Eq. (8.6) with respect to r, we get ev er Oe Oxo Mak er &v Sx8r 5 ie: Eliminating ot from the above equations and rearranging the terms, we have eV eV = <7 9) oe Be oa where 7 with a dimension of velocity. Similarly, solving Eqs. (8.5) and (8.6) for current J, we get Sl _ 87 = 1 oF oe Coa Equations (8.9) and (8.10) are wave equations. The general solution Of the voltage wave Eq. (8.9) is given by Vix, ) = fie + ut) + fix — us) (8.11) where f; and f; are functions of (x + wt) and (x — ut) Tespectively. This equation expresses V a8 a function of time and also of distance x. ‘That Eq. (8.11) is a solution of Eq. (8.9) can be established by back substitution. Differentiating Eq. (8.11), we get OV _ Oflxtuy 6 as Shlx-u) 6 Ox ~ O(xtut) Se (tu) + uy Bet) " Ale + ut) + foe - ut)Overvtage Transients in Power Systems TSM and ev é 5 Fer = Ae tua) + ous) (8.12) V _ Sf(xtu) 6 Sfylx-ut) 6 == oe. S ee See BF Bea) BET + Sy BE MO) = [AG + ut) = ffx-ud)] and Vn Bee ‘ Be = OLN tun + feu] (8.13) From Eqs. (8.12) and (8.13), we get av ov boat which satisfies Eq, (8.9) Now let us turn our attention to the physical significance of the solution of Eq. (8.11). Any solution of the form f(x + ut) represents a travelling wave, because for any value of fa corresponding value of x can be found such that (x + ut) has a constant value. For example, if at t= 0 the function f(x + wt) has a value of fi(m) at x = m, then at a subsequent time £= 1 it has the same value at x = (m ~ uy) as it formerly had at x = m. In other words, the voltage distribution has moved intact a distance uf, in the direction of negative x. This is illustrated in Fig. 8.4. The function f(x ~ ut) represents a travelling wave moving in the direction of positive x. The function fi(x + uf) is referred to as a backward wave and Fix — ut) as a forward wave. Therefore, Eq. (8.9) is satisfied by any or both of the travelling waves fi(x + ut) and f(x — ut), each moving with a velocity u. From Eq. (8.5), we get ov. ox = Lies uy + Ao uy] Integrating both sides of the above equation with respect to 1, Ta, = Zlie+ ut) ~ f(x ut)] 2 Jpeltr-my - filx+ut)] 1 , -¥,) (6.14)