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Effective Length of Counterpoise Wire Under Lightning Current

Jinliang He, Senior Member, IEEE, Yanqing Gao, Student Member, IEEE, Rong Zeng, Member, IEEE, Jun Zou, Xidong Liang, Bo Zhang, Jaebok Lee, and Sughun Chang

AbstractIn a high soil resistivity area, counterpoise wires are applied to decrease the grounding resistance of tower grounding devices. If the conductor of counterpoise wire is very long, although the power frequency grounding resistance of the tower grounding device is decreased, the lightning protection performance of the transmission line is still not good. The inuences of the length of grounding electrodes on the lightning transient characteristic were analyzed. The dynamic and nonlinear effect of soil ionization around the grounding electrode was considered in the analysis model of transient characteristics for the grounding electrodes under lightning impulse. The counterpoise wire has an effective length when lightning passes through it. When the length of a grounding electrode exceeds the effective length, the grounding conductor will not be utilized effectively. The simulating experiments were performed to analyze inuences of the length of the counterpoise wire on the impulse characteristics. The formulae to calculate the impulse effective lengths of counterpoise wires were proposed. The model proposed in the paper has been validated by comparing the numerical results with experimental tests. Index TermsCounterpoise wire, effective length, grounding device, lightning current, simulating experiment, transient characteristic, transmission line.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE performance of grounding devices under high impulse current plays an important role in the safe and reliable operation of power systems. The lightning protection effects of transmission lines are related to the impulse characteristics of grounding devices for transmission-line towers. Reducing the impulse grounding resistance of the grounding device of a transmission-line tower is a very important measure to improve the lightning withstand characteristics of transmission lines. When a lightning strikes a transmission line, high lightning current will ow into the grounding device and dissipate into soil. As already evidenced by many studies, the characteristic of grounding devices subject to high impulse current is dramatically different from that at low frequency. Because the inductive behavior of electrodes can become more and more important with respect to its resistive behavior and, in addition, this

large current can generate soil ionization around the electrode, makes the impulse response typically nonlinear. The transient characteristic of a grounding electrode depends upon many electrical and geometrical parameters, which include the size and the structure of the grounding device, soil parameters, impulse current parameters, and the feed point. When the impulse current with high frequency dissipates in the soil, the distribution of the electric charge in the space varies with time. And it shows the feature of the time-variable eld. The engineering design of grounding devices in the protection against lightning is in dire need of scientic guidance. The scientic design of a grounding device is not only to enhance the safety of the system but also to reduce the construction cost to the minimum. There have been many papers concentrated on the transient performance of grounding wires from experimental tests and simulation analysis [1][11]. Pioneering work was conducted by Sunde in the late 1930s [12], [13]. As mentioned in [14], sometimes the impulse impedance can be much greater than the power frequency grounding resistance. In China, in the high soil resistivity area, sometimes long counterpoise wires with conductor lengths of longer than 200 m are applied to decrease the grounding resistance of tower grounding devices. Although the power frequency grounding resistances of those extensive grounding electrodes are reduced, the lightning protection performance of the transmission line is still not good because the grounding electrode has effective length. Several papers had analyzed the effective length of the grounding electrode [2], [14], [15]. Mazzetti and Vaca [2] analyzed the effective length of the grounding electrode, namely the fraction of the electrode which is sufcient to dissipate the larger part of the current, and found the effective length of the grounding wire to be small in low resistivity soil, but increases with soil resistivity. Gupta and Thaper [14] found that only the limited length of the electrode from the point of the feeding of the current is effective in controlling the impulse grounding impedance; they dened this length as effective length. They proposed an empirical equation to calculate the effective length of horizontal grounding wire (1) where is the soil resistivity, is the wavehead time. The effective length is reached when the factor reaches a value of 0.57, where is the power frequency grounding resistance, is the wave front time in microseconds, and is the total inductance of grounding electrode. The coefcient is 1.4 for a

Manuscript received July 22, 2003; revised December 11, 2003. Paper no. TPWRD-00387-2003. J. He, Y. Gao, R. Zeng, J. Zou, and X. Liang, and B. Zhang are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail: hejl@tsinghua.edu.cn; zengrong@tsinghua.edu.cn; gaoyq@emc.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn; zoujun@tsinghua.edu.cn; lxd-dea@tsinghua.edu.cn; shizbcn@tsinghua.edu.cn). J. Lee and S. Chang are with the Electrical Environment and Transmission Group, Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute, Changwon 641600, Korea (e-mail: jblee@keri.re.kr; shchang@keri.re.kr). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPWRD.2004.838457

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single horizontal electrode fed at one end, 1.55 for a single horizontal electrode fed at the center, and 1.85 for 4-arm star conguration fed at the star center, the effective length is for one arm of center-injection congurations. During their analysis, the soil ionization phenomenon was not considered. On the other hand, the inuence of the impulse current was not considered too. The inuences of the length of horizontal grounding electrodes on the lightning transient characteristic were analyzed by simulating calculations and experiments in this paper. II. SIMULATING ANALYSIS OF EXTENDED GROUNDING ELECTRODES A. Puncturing of Soil Under Lightning Current When a high impulse current excites a grounding electrode, the transient EM eld would be generated in the soil around the grounding electrode (2) where is the electric eld strength in the soil, is the soil resistivity and is the current density in the soil. When the electric eld strength surrounding the grounding conductor exceeds the critical value of soil breakdown elec, then the soil breakdown around the trical eld strength conductor will occur. It will make the potential fall around the grounding conductor smaller. And it will convert the affected portion of the soil from an insulator to a conductor. The fall of potential in the area of soil ionization is often omitted for simplied simulation. That is to say, the resistivity of the area of soil ionization is approximately considered to be zero. The radius of the soil ionization zone surrounding the grounding electrode can be considered to be the equivalent radius of the electrode during the transient process. The transient grounding resistance of a grounding electrode under impulse current varies with time (3) and are the current and the voltage at the feed where point. The impulse grounding resistance of a grounding elecof voltage trode is dened as the ratio of the peak value of injected developed at the feeding point to the peak value impulse current [14] (4) The dened impulse grounding resistance in (4) does not have any physical meaning, but if the possible lightning current is known, then we can use it to estimate the potential of the grounding electrode generated by lightning current; this is very important in lightning protection of the transmission line. The inductive effect of grounding conductor due to the high frequency of impulse current would block the current to ow toward the other end of the conductor. This will result in extremely unequal leakage current distribution along the grounding conductor. The potential distribution along the grounding conductor is also nonuniform. The ionization degree and equivalent radius of the ionized soil around every point of the conductor are also

Fig. 1. Shape of the ionized zone around a grounding electrode.

Fig. 2.

Modeling of equivalent radii for each segment.

nonuniform. Simulating experiments were proposed to study the transient performance of grounding devices; the simulation principle of impulse characteristic of grounding devices was introduced in [16]. During the experiment, photosensitive lms were arranged near the electrode; the tested shape of the ionized zone around a grounding conductor is illustrated in Fig. 1. The current density in the point in the soil, where it is much closer to the feed point, is much larger. So, the ionized zone of the soil around the conductor is not columniform but pyramidal. B. Analysis Model of Extending Grounding Electrode With respect to the complexity of the mathematical model, the used model in this paper is shown in Fig. 2; the conductor is represented by a set of cylindrical zones to simulate the soil ionization phenomena as illustrated in Fig. 1. Obviously, this assumption is reasonable. in Fig. 2 is the equivalent radius of the th segment, which is time variable when an impulse current is injected into the grounding electrode; and is the radius of is chosen to be large enough that the the metal conductor. electric eld at the edge of the ionized zone is below the critical value given in [17], which is time variable. A horizontal grounding electrode buried in the soil under lightning impulse current can be considered as a distributed network as shown in Fig. 3. For a conductor segment, it is composed of series resistance , series inductance , shunt conductance , and shunt capacitance . The shunt capacitance and shunt conductance in Fig. 3 of the electrode tied to the diameter of the conductor are related to the equivalent diameters of every conductor segment, so they are also time-varying. But we should make a point that the series resistance and series inductance are not affected by soil ionization. That can be explained as follows. The directions of the current owing into soil on the boundary between

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Fig. 3. Representation of a ground electrode with nonuniformly lumped parameters.

the soil and conductors are normal to the surface of the conductors. The longitudinal current is considered owing inside the conductors. The magnetic linkage interlinked with currents is unvaried with the equivalent diameter of the conductors. According to the physical denition, the series resistance and series inductance are unvaried with the equivalent diameter of the grounding conductor. The soil ionization only affects the shunt capacitance and shunt conductance . The unit length series resistance, series inductance, shunt capacitance, and shunt conductance of a grounding conductor are given in [12], [13], and [18]. If a lightning current is injected into a grounding conductor, the inner self-inductance of a grounding conductor can be neglected when comparing it with the external self-inductance due to the strong skin effect, so the self-inducof the th segment can be calculated by tance (5) where is the length of the th segment of the grounding elecis the permeability of free space. trode and The resistance of the th segment with the length of can be calculated by

Fig. 4. Relationship between impulse ground resistance and the length of the grounding electrode.

As is well known, the electric-eld intensity on the boundary of the ionized zone is the critical value of soil breakdown. The equivalent radius for each segment can be obtained by (10) where is the current density leaked by the th segment, and is the current leaked into earth from the th segment. If the current of each segment in every time step is known, the equivalent radius can be determined from (10), which is time-varying. The parameters of each segment can be evaluated from (7)(9). Therefore, the impulse response of a grounding conductor can be obtained with the application of nodal analysis and a suitable iterative algorithm, which takes into account the nonlinearity of electrical parameters. in this paper The value used for the critical eld gradient is 300 kV/m as suggested by Mousa [17]. C. Inuence of Grounding Electrode Length on Impulse Characteristics

(6) where is the soil resistivity, and is the burial depth of the of the th seggrounding electrode. The shunt capacitance ment with a length of and an ionization zone radius of in an innite medium is (7)

where is the permittivity of soil. When the electrode is buried in a depth of , the capacitance is obtained by assuming two conductors with a distance of in an innite medium, which is based on image theory. So the capacitance of a buried grounding conductor is equal to (8) The shunt conductance in Fig. 3 can be determined by [11] (9)

The inuences of the grounding electrode length on the impulse resistance, when the impulse current (front time and amplitude) and soil resistivity are designated, are shown in Fig. 4. The case is for a grounding electrode with a radius of 10 mm, buried at a depth of 0.8 m in a soil with resistivity of 100 and relative permittivity of 9. The impulse current, with standard exponential waveshape and different ampli2.6/50 tude is injected at one end of a horizontal grounding electrode. Clearly, the impulse grounding resistance decreases with the ground electrode length. But the curveheads toward saturation when its length reaches a certain value. The reason is that the inductive effect of the grounding conductor increases with the increment of the conductors length, which will make leakage current unequally even more along the electrode. This will make the impulse grounding resistance become saturation when the length of the grounding electrode increases. The inuence of the length of the electrode on the transient potential of the lightning current injecting point is shown in Fig. 5. The burial depth is 0.8 m, and the soil resistivity is standard expo100 m. The impulse current, with 2.6/50 , is injected at one nential waveshape and amplitude end of a horizontal grounding electrode. When the grounding in Fig. 5], the peak value of the electrode is short [

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Fig. 5. Inuence of the length of a ground electrode on the transient potential at the lightning injecting point.

Fig. 7. Equivalent radii of the ionized soil zones of an electrode.

Fig. 8.

Denition of the effective length of a horizontal grounding electrode.

Fig. 6. Ionized zones along the grounding electrodes with different lengths: (a) very short grounding electrode; (b) short grounding electrode; (c) long grounding electrode.

maximum potential is obviously high. When the grounding electrode is longer than 20 m, the peak values of maximal transient potentials are almost the same. The time duration reaching the maximal transient potential for a long electrode is shorter than that for a short one. When the length of a grounding electrode exceeds a certain value, the increment of the grounding electrode length will have little effect on the maximal transient potential and the impulse grounding resistance. III. IONIZATION ZONE OF EXTENDED GROUNDING ELECTRODE UNDER LIGHTNING CURRENT From the simulating analysis, the ionization zones of grounding electrodes with different lengths can be obtained as illustrated in Fig. 6. When the length of the grounding electrode is very short, the ionized zone in soil along the electrode is almost equal as illustrated in Fig. 6(a); with the increment of the grounding electrode length, the ionized zone along the electrode has an obvious pyramidal shape as shown in Fig. 6(b); when the grounding electrode is very long, the current leaked by the end of the electrode is limited. And the electric eld strength in the soil around the end of the electrode is not strong

enough to cause the soil ionization; if it is long enough, there is not any current reaching the opposite end of the electrode as shown in Fig. 6(c). That is to say, a grounding electrode has an impulse effective length. When the length of a grounding electrode exceeds the impulse effective length, the grounding conductor will not be utilized effectively. The equivalent radii of the ionized zones of an electrode in two terminals and the middle point are shown in Fig. 7, which change with time. The length of the grounding electrode is 20 m, , the applied lightning current and the soil resistivity is 100 is 10 kA, the burial depth of the grounding conductor with radius of 10 mm is 0.8 m. The ionized zone is very different in different portions of the electrode. IV. EFFECTIVE LENGTH OF COUNTERPOISE WIRES FROM SIMULATING ANALYSIS Presently, all researchers have realized that a grounding electrode has an effective length under impulse current. In [14], it is dened as the length of the electrode in which the voltage wave at the terminal end of the electrode has little effect on the head end. Another denition by some researchers is the length of a grounding electrode in which the derivative of the impulse grounding resistance is smaller than a certain value. This denition is used in our analysis. We dened the effective length of the grounding electrode as the length when the decreased value of grounding resistance with the increment of the length is smaller than a xed value. As shown in Fig. 8, we dened (11)

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Fig. 9. Relation between the effective length and soil resistivity under different time duration of the wavefront.

Fig. 10. Relationship between the impulse grounding resistance and the length of the horizontal grounding electrode.

where is the included angle of the tangent through point P and is selected in this paper. the horizontal direction. The effective length of the grounding electrode is involved with the soil resistivity , the front time , the magnitude , and the feed point of the injected current. When the feed point is at one end of the grounding electrode, the relation between the impulse effective length and the soil resistivity for different front time of impulse current are shown in Fig. 9, where is 10 kA and the burial depth is 0.8 m. From Fig. 8, we can observe that the effective length is shorter for the impulse current with shorter front time. And the effective length is longer for the soil with higher resistivity. That can be explained as follows. For the impulse current with the same am, and plitude, the short front time means the big steepness the big steepness means high frequency, which will strengthen the inductance effect of the grounding conductor. The high resistivity of the soil will block the current owing into the soil and force the current moving toward the terminal end of the electrode. So the effective length will be longer for the grounding electrode buried in soil with higher resistivity. V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF EXTENDED GROUNDING ELECTRODES The simulation experiments were introduced in [16]. Impulse experiments using grounding device models were systematically performed to analyze the inuence of different factors on the impulse characteristics of grounding device models according to the simulation principle of impulse characteristics. During the experiments, soil resistivity was changed in the range . Effects of different parameters on impulse of 1005103 grounding resistance and impulse coefcients of different transmission tower grounding devices were discussed. Formulae to calculate impulse coefcients and power frequency grounding resistance of different grounding devices were obtained. The inuence of the length of horizontal grounding electrode on the impulse resistance in different impulse current was tested and shown in Fig. 10 and the burial depth is 0.8 m. When the length of the electrode increases, the impulse grounding resistance decreases. When it exceeds a certain value, the impulse grounding resistance reduces very slowly. From a lot of experimental results, when the magnitude of impulse current is xed at a certain value, the effective length of the grounding electrode increases, because the portion of the

Fig. 11. Inuence of the length of the horizontal grounding electrode on the impulse resistance in different soil resistivity.

Fig. 12. Inuence of the impulse current on the effective length of the horizontal electrode.

impulse current owing into the soil from the electrode end of the feed point is reduced and then the effective length increases. The inuence of the length of horizontal grounding electrode on the impulse grounding resistance in different soil resistivity was tested and shown in Fig. 11. We can observe that the grounding resistance easily reaches a saturation state if the soil resistivity is low. Under the impulse current with waveshape of 2.6/50 , the effective length of the grounding electrode is shown in Fig. 12. With the increase of the impulse current, the effective length decreases. The inuence of the soil resistivity on the effective length of the horizontal electrode is shown in Fig. 13; with the increase of soil resistivity, the effective length increases.

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Fig. 13. Inuence of the soil resistivity on the effective length of the horizontal electrode. TABLE I COMPARISON OF GROUNDING ELECTRODE EFFECTIVE LENGTHS IN DIFFERENT SOIL RESISTIVITY BETWEEN EXPERIMENTAL AND ANALYZED RESULTS

Fig. 14 Comparison of the effective lengths of end-injection type and center-injection-type counterpoise wires.

one-arm. Similarly, from experimental and analyzed results, the effective length for one arm of center-injecting single horizontal electrode was concluded as (13) and the effective length for one arm of center-injecting four-arm star counterpoise wires can be calculated by

VI. REGRESSIVE FORMULAS TO CALCULATE EFFECTIVE LENGTH OF COUNTERPOISE WIRES The data in Table I, derived from analyzing simulating test results and numerical ones, are the effective length of the grounding electrodes buried in the soil with different resistivity, when the impulse current, with 2.6/50- waveform and 10-kA amplitude is injected at one end. Comparing the data in Table I, the effective lengths obtained from the simulating calculation and test are close, but they have differences in comparison to the results obtained from Guptas formula (1), which is caused by different denitions of effective length and without consideration of soil ionization and lightning current in (1). Synthesizing the results of the impulse effective lengths of the horizontal grounding electrode from numerical analysis and simulating test, the formula to estimate the impulse effective length of grounding electrodes is obtained by the least squares curve tting methods, when the feed point is at one end (12) where is the front time of applied impulse current in , is the magnitude of the applied impulse current in kA, and is soil . Formula (12) can be used for the burial depth resistivity in of larger than 0.8 m. The inuence of conductor radius on the effective length is not obvious, and we can use (12) to estimate the effective length of counterpoises with different conductor radius. From the practical point of view, the conguration of the counterpoise should be the center injection type. For 40-kA lightning current, the effective lengths of end-injection single electrode, center-injection single horizontal electrode, and center-injection four-arm star counterpoise are compared in Fig. 14, the effective length of center-injection type is for its VII. CONCLUSION

(14)

When high impulse current excites a grounding electrode, the large current can generate complicated soil ionization surrounding the grounding conductors, which makes the transient characteristic of the grounding electrode typically nonlinear. The paper presents an effective method for this problem, which is a numerical calculation approach based on the circuit model of distributed time-variable parameters. It accurately takes into account the nonlinear effects of breakdown in the soil surrounding the ground conductors. This model can be used to accurately predict the transient characteristic of the grounding systems excited by impulse currents. A grounding electrode has an impulse effective length. When the length of a grounding electrode exceeds the impulse effective length, the grounding conductor will not be utilized effectively. The inuential factors on the effective length of counterpoise wire are analyzed. The effective length increases with the soil resistivity and the wavefront time of impulse current, but decreases with the magnitude of lightning current. The formulae to calculate the impulse effective length of counterpoise wires are provided in this paper. It will be helpful for the technician to design and reform ground systems against lightning. The analyzed results have been validated by comparison with experimental ones. REFERENCES
[1] E. E. Oettle, A new estimation curve for predicting the impulse impedance of concentrated earth electrodes, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 20202029, Oct. 1988.

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[2] C. Mazzettie and G. M. Veca, Impulse behavior of grounding electrodes, IEEE Trans. Power App. Syst., vol. 102, no. PAS-9, pp. 31483154, Sep. 1983. [3] A. F. Otero, J. Cidras, and C. Garrido, Frequency analysis of grounding systems, in Proc. 8th Int. Conf. Harmonics Quality Power, vol. 1, 1998, pp. 348353. [4] A. C. Liew and M. Darveniza, Dynamic model of impulse characteristics of concentrated earth, Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., vol. 121, no. 2, pp. 123135, 1974. [5] A. Geri, E. Garbagnati, and G. M. Veca et al., Non-linear behavior of ground electrodes under lightning surge currents: computer modeling and comparison with experimental results, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 14421445, Mar. 1992. [6] D. G. Leonid and M. Heimbach, Frequency dependent and transient characteristics of substation grounding systems, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 172178, Jan. 1997. [7] M. Heimbach and D. G. Leonid, Grounding system analysis in transients programs applying electromagnetic eld approach, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 186193, Jan. 1997. [8] W. Xiong and F. Dawalibi, Transient performance of substation grounding systems subjected to lightning and similar surge currents, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 14121417, Jul. 1994. [9] F. Dawalibi, W. Xiong, and J. Ma, Transient performance of substation structures and associated grounding systems, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 520527, May/Jun. 1995. [10] J. Cidras, A. F. Otero, and C. Garrido, Nodal frequency analysis of grounding systems considering the soil ionization effect, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 103107, Jan. 2000. [11] A. Geri, Behavior of grounding systems excited by high impulse currents: the model and its validation, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 10081017, Jul. 1999. [12] E. D. Sunde, Surge characteristics of a buried bare wire, AIEE Trans., vol. 59, pp. 987991, 1940. , Earth Conduction Effects in Transmission System. New York: [13] Dover, 1949. [14] B. P. Gupta and B. Thapar, Impulse characteristics of grounding electrodes, J. Inst. Eng. (India), vol. 64, no. 4, pp. 178182, Feb. 1981. [15] G. R. Xie, Overvoltage of Power System (in Chinese). Beijing, China: Hydraulic and Electrical Power Press, 1985. [16] J. L. He, R. Zeng, Y. P. Tu, J. Zou, S. M. Chen, and Z. C. Guan, Laboratory investigation of impulse characteristics of transmission tower grounding devices, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 9941001, Jul. 2003. [17] A. M. Mousa, The soil ionization gradient associated with discharge of high currents into concentrated electrodes, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 16691677, Jul. 1994. [18] F. W. Grover, Inductance Calculations. New York: Van Nostrand, 1947.

Yanqing Gao (S02) received the B.Sc. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1999, where he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University. His research elds include overvoltage analysis in power system, grounding technology, and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC).

Rong Zeng (M02) was born in Shaanxi, China, in 1971. He received the B.Sc., M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1995, 1997, and 1999, respectively. From 1999 to 2002, he was a Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University. His research interests include high voltage technology, grounding technology, power electronics, and distribution system automation.

Jun Zou was born in Wuhan, P. R. China, in 1971. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Zhengzhou University in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, in 1994 and 1997, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in July 2001, all in electrical engineering. His research elds include computational electromagnetics and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC).

Xidong Liang was born in Jiangyin, China, in 1962. He received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in high-voltage engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1984, 1987, and 1991, respectively. Currently, he is the Dean of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University. From 1991 to 1992, he conducted research as a Visiting Scholar with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), Manchester, U.K. Then, he was an Associate Professor with Tsinghua University in 1993 and a Professor in 1997. His interests include outdoor insulation, composite insulators, and organic outdoor insulation materials, and EMC. Dr. Liang is the Senior Member of CSEE from 1998 and a Member of CIGRE SC33 from 2000.

Bo Zhang was born in Datong, China, in 1976. He received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in theoretical electrical engineering from the North China Electric Power University, Baoding, China, in 1998 and 2003, respectively. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests include computational electromagnetics, grounding technology, and EMC in power systems.

Jinliang He (M02SM02) was born in Changsha, China, in 1966. He received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Wuhan University of Hydraulic and Electrical Engineering, China, in 1988, the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Chongqing University, Chongqing China, in 1991, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1994, respectively. Currently, he is Vice Chief of High Voltage Research Institute at Tsinghua University. He became a Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University in 1994, and an Associate Professor in the same Department in 1996. From 1994 to 1997, he was the head of High Voltage Laboratory at Tsinghua University. He was also a Visiting Scientist in Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute, involved in research on metal oxide varistors and high voltage polymeric metal oxide surge arresters from 1997 to 1998. In 2001, he was promoted to a Professor at Tsinghua University. His research interests include overvoltages and EMC in power systems and electronic systems, grounding technology, power apparatus, dielectric material, and power distribution automation. He is the author of three books and many technical papers. Dr. He is a senior member of the China Electrotechnology Society, and a member of the International Compumag Society, the vice chief of China Lightning Protection Standardization Technology Committee, and members of Electromagnetic Interference Protection Committee and Transmission Line Committee of China Power Electric Society, member of China Surge Arrester Standardization Technology Committee, members of Overvoltage and Insulation Coordination Standardization Technology Committee in China Electric Power Industry.

Jaebok Lee was born in Iri, Korea, in 1962. He received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Inha University, Inchon, Korea, in 1985, 1987, and 1999, respectively. Currently, he is a Principle Researcher of the electrical environment and transmission group of the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI), Changwon, Korea, where he has been since 1987 as a Researcher of the Power System Insulation Coordination Lab. He was actively involved in electromagnetic-compatibility (EMC) design of low-voltage power and control systems. His interests include surge protection and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) in power systems and electronic systems and grounding technology. Dr. Lee is a member of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers (KIEE) and a Korea Chapter member of IEC TC 77A.

Sughun Chang was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1974. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from Inha University, Inchon, Korea, in 1996 and 1999, respectively. Currently, he is with the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI), Changwon, Korea. He was actively involved in electromagnetic-compatibility (EMC) design of low-voltage power and control system. His research interests include surge protection and EMC in power systems and electronic systems and grounding technology. Mr. Chang is a member of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers (KIEE).