Causes of Over-voltages

1. Internal Causes
a. Switching Surges
b. Insulation Failure
c. Arcing Ground
d. Resonance

2. External Causes i.e Lightening

 Internal & External Causes
• Do not produce surge of large magnitude.
Hardly increase system voltage to the twice the
normal value.
• Generally taken care by providing proper
insulation to the equipments.
•But surges due to lightening are very severe
and may increase the system voltage several
times the normal value.
•May cause severe damage if equipment are
not protected against lightening surges.
 1. Internal Causes

• These are primarily due to oscillations set up

by the sudden change in circuit condition.
• This circuit change be a normal switching
operation such as opening of circuit breaker or
it may be a fault condition such as grounding
of a line conductor.
• The normal system insulation are designed to
withstand such surges.
 a. Switching Surges
• Over-voltages produced in power system due to
switching operation is known as switching surges.
• With the increase in transmission voltages
needed to fulfill the required increase in
transmitted powers, switching surges have
become the governing factor in the design of
insulation for EHV and UHV systems.
• In the meantime, lightning over-voltages come as
a secondary factor in these networks.
 Switching Surges
Fundamental reason for this shift in relative
importance from lightning to switching surges as
higher transmission voltages are called for:
Over-voltages produced on transmission lines by
lightning strokes are only slightly dependent on
the power system voltages.
As a result, their magnitudes relative to the
system peak voltage decrease as the latter is
increased.
 Origin of Switching Over-voltages
1. Energization of transmission lines and cables.
a. Energization of a line that is open circuited at
the far end
b. Energization of a line that is terminated by an
unloaded transformer
c. Energization of a line through the low-voltage
side of a transformer
2. Reenergization of a line. This means the
energization of transmission line carrying
charges trapped by previous line interruptions
when high-speed reclosures are used.
3. Load rejection. This is affected by a circuit
breaker opening at the far end of the line.
This may also be followed by opening the line
at the sending end in what is called a line
dropping operation.
4. Switching on and off of equipment. All
switching operations involving an element of
the transmission network will produce a
switching surge.
• a. Switching of high-voltage reactors
• b. Switching of transformers that are loaded
by a reactor on their tertiary winding
• c. Switching of a transformer at no load
5. Fault initiation and clearing.
Some important switching operations which can
lead to switching over-voltages
 b. Insulation Failure
• Most common case of insulation failure in a
power system is the grounding of conductors
i.e insulation failure between line and earth.
• Causes over-voltages in the system.
 c. Arcing Ground
In early days of transmission the neutral of
three phase transmission line was not earthed
to gain two advantages:
• In case of line to ground fault, the line is not
put out of action.
• Zero sequence current is eliminated resulting
in decrease of interference with transmission
line
• Insulated neutrals gives no problem with short
lines and comparatively lower voltages.
• But when the line is long and operate at
higher voltages, serious problem called arcing
ground is often witnessed.
• Arcing ground produces severe oscillations of
three to four times the normal voltage.
• The phenomenon of intermittent arc taking
place in line to ground fault of a three phase
system with consequent production of
transients is known as arcing ground.
• Transient produce due to arcing ground is
cumulative may cause serious damage to the
equipment in the power system by causing
breakdown of insulation.
• Arcing ground can be prevented by earthing
the neutral.
 d. Resonance
• Resonance in an electrical system occurs when
inductive reactance of the circuit became
equal to capacitive reactance.
• Under resonance the impedance of circuit
became equal to resistance of circuit and p.f.
is unity.
• Resonance causes high voltages in the power
system.
• In usual transmission line capacitance is very
small so the resonance rarely occur at the
supply frequency.
• However if the generator emf wave is
distorted the trouble of resonance may occur
due to 5th or higher harmonics.
 2. External Causes i.e Lightening

• An electric discharge between cloud and

earth, between clouds and between the
charge centres of same cloud is known as
lightening.
• One of the major source of danger and
damage to e.h.v. transmission lines.
• Resulting in loss of transmission upto few
hours to complete destruction of line.
• Entails lot of expense to power utilities and
consumers.