97165

THE USE OF EMTP FOR ANALYZING A CABLE TERMINATED

TRANSFORMER UNDER A LIGHTNING SURGE

Mohammed H. Shwehdi
Electrical Engineering Dept.
KFUPM, Dhahran 3261,
Saudi Arabia
phone: +966 3 8602712

Mohammed A. Abdalla
SECTI, SCECO-EAST
Dammam, Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT It is a common practice to connect the step down transformer

Protection of transformers and other system equipment against
transient overvoltages resulting from lightning or other causes
is an important consideration in power system design. For
insulation co-ordination in transmission lines and substation
equipments, it is necessary to accurately predict the lightning
surge overvoltage that occur in power systems. The magnitude
and waveshape of this overvoltage arriving at the terminating
transformer is greatly affected by the use of a length of a cable
connecting the transmission line to the terminating transformer.
This paper is investigating the effect of this length of cable
under lightning surge as it reaches the step down transformer.
The computer simulation - through EMTP - of a 345 KV line is
presented and the results are analyzed aiming to obtain the
reduced overvoltage at the terminating equipment and to find
the optimum length and size of the cable used as a terminator.
INTRODUCTION
The Electromagnetic Transient Program (EMTP) was
developed as an alternative digital computer simulation tool to
study high speed transient phenomena in power systems, to the
analog computer model known as Transient Network Analyzer
(TNA) . The EMTP uses computer generated model data to
represent power system equipment then uses this model to
create sets of ordinary differential equations and linear
equations describing the system to simulate the transient
phenomena with voltages as unknown variables . The EMTP
was first introduced in the early 1960s by H.W.Domme1 at the
Munich Institute of Technology and later he continued to work
on it at Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) . EPRI and the
EMTP Development Coordination Group (DCG) are taking
charge of documentation , validation and adding new technical
features . The main reference for the EMTP is the Rule Book
developed by the DCG which provides guidelines for input data
format and modeling techniques for EMTP.
in a substation to the incoming transmission line through a
length of a cable . The length of this cable differs according to
the location of the substation. It could be quite long in urban
areas or very short in remote areas where the transmission line
can come very near to the substation. Due to the large difference
between the surge impedance of the transmission line and the
cable - approximately 10:1 - the cable can serve to attenuate and
distort any surge traveling from the transmission line towards
the step down transformer. The characteristics of the cable vary
as its size and length vary and so the resulting overvoltage
varies accordingly.
Although the lightning overvoltage is independent of the
system voltage , the characteristics of the equipment used -
cables , transformers, lines - are dependent on that voltage and
so they affect the resulting overvltage.
The lightning surge used here is a monopolar type with 20
kN20 US and discharging at the middle of a lOOkm
transmission line of 345 kV. The line is terminated by a 500
MVA step down transformer connected by a cable to the
transmission line. Different sizes of cables are selected ; 800,
1150, and 1300 mm sq. with different lengths 100, 1000, 2000
meters. The results were compared for the different cable sizes
and lengths for the line as an open- circuited or terminated with
a step down transformer.
SYSTEMS STUDIED
Transformer Data
Rated apparent power 500 MVA
Rated voltage 345 I 115 kV
Rated currents 836.7 I2510 A
Rated excitation current 0.006 pu
Rated core loss 0.003 pu
Sort circuit reactance 0.1232 pu
 97165

Capacitance to ground 0.064 10.004 pu the end of the line without a cable serves by its stray capacitance
BIL 900 kV to attenuate the lightning overvoltage by about 40% compared
to the open-circuited system without a cable.

20 K A 120 u S

SIZE. Mm LENGTH OVERVOL OVERVOL

sq. m TAGE TAGE
open-circuit with

8
MV transformer

FIG. (1) : CIRCUIT USED TO INVESTIGATE CABLE

ATTENUATION CHARACTERISTICS

Saturation curve data

B : 1.4142 1.5558 1.6404 1.8527 2.200 PU
H : 8.4853 39.758 94.374 638.19 1530.0 10E-3 PU

Oil Filled Cables

Size mm sq. 800 1150 1300
R IKm .0221 ,0156 ,0138
LmH/Km .212 ,221 ,230
CuFlKm .236 .260 ,274

FIG (2) : OVERVOLTAGE ON OPEN CIRCUITED

Transmission Line Data TRANSMISSION LINE
Z 350
v 3E+5Km/s Now if a short length of a cable ( 100 meters of 800 mm sq.
length 100 Km cable size ) is introduced to the open circuited system the
overvoltage due to the lightning will be reduced from 6.98 MV
to 6.46 MV.
RESULTS On the other hand if a cable length of 1000 m (1 150 mm sq.) is
The study consists of modeling the system of Fig (1) under used it will attenuate and distort the overvoltage by about 60-
two cases both with cable and no cable connected in the system: 70%. See Fig (3) and Fig (4) below.
(1) As an open circuit without the step down transformer .
(2) Normal circuit operation with the step down transformer 1
ilnx. 1.9fi3lSetO6
in circuit. Aug 333652
The system was also studied under different cable sizes and , Abs' 1.9%375et06
lengths for more analysis . Several EMTP cases were evaluated
and compared to the reference case where no transformer is used
I
and without terminating cable. The results are summarized in
table (1) .

DISCUSSION
As it is clear from the EMTP output results in table ( 1 ) and
graphs in Figures 2,3 & 4 that the presence of the transformer at
FIG (3): OVERVOLTAGE ON A 1000 M , 1150 MM SQ.
CABLE WITHOUT A STEP DOWN TRANSFORMER.

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 97165

(5) Omen R.E. and Clinkenbeard C.R.. “Surge protection of

UD cable systems.“ IEEE Trans. PAS vol. 97 No. 5 . Sept.
1978. Parr 1.

FIG (4) : OVERVOLTAGE ON A 1000 M , 1150 MM SQ.

CABLE TERMINATED TO A STEP DOWN
TRANSFORMER.

From the analysis it has been found that the cable size has no
significant effect on the traveling surge .It can be seen from the
values in table (1) for 1150 mm sq. lOOOm length and 1300 mm
sq. lOOOm length cables that the attenuation on the two cable
sizes used remained the same .
With the use of a cable 2Km long , the resulting overvoltage
1.23 MV is still above the transformer BIL which is 0.9 MV,
but at this stage application of a normal surge arrester can
protect the transformer.

CONCLUSION
Protection of transformers and other system equipment against
transient overvoltages resulting from lightning or other causes is
an important consideration in power systems. EMTP program
simulation and modeling techniques facilitate the analysis of
such overVoltages in very high graphical format.
The results of the EMTP simulation were in very good
agreement with the conceptual technical application of using a
cable to terminate a transformer to a transmission line to serve
as an attenuater for any overvoltage traveling towards the
transformer.
The cable length will affect the overvoltage magnitude
and waveshape appreciably, but the cable size will not.

REFERENCES
(1) Electromagnetic Transient Program (EMTP), Revised Rule
Book Version 2.0, Volume 1; Main Program, June 1989.

(2) Barker P.P. , “Voltage Quadrupling on a UD cable.” IEEE

Trans. PWRD vol. 5 , No. 1 Jan. 1990.

(3) Dugan R.C. and Sponsler W.L. , “ Surge protection of UD

cable systems.” IEEE Trans. PAS vol. 97 No. 5 , Sept.
1978. Part 2.

(4) Greenwood A ., “ Electrical Transients in Power Systems”

John Willey & Sons, 1991.

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