Electromagnetic compatibility studies within smart grid automated substation

Abstract

Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) is the ability of an equipment or system to function satisfactorily in its electromagnetic environment without introducing intolerable electromagnetic disturbances to anything in that environment. Within the smart grid automated substation, all equipment installed need to be compatible with each other. The electromagnetic environment within high voltage substations needs to be correctly predicted and quantified. This is due to more and more sensitive power electronic devices such as microelectronic equipment that are introduced and other disturbances event in a smart grid system. This trend will only increase with the advent of the ‘smart grid’; therefore, there is a need to reassess the substation environment compatibility for current and future circumstances. In this thesis, the numerical calculation method used to determine magnetic field distribution within a substation environment has been reviewed using the input from substation performance in power system software. A new routine developed in-house using Matlab, where a hybrid combination of the Biot-Savart Law (BSL) and Finite Difference Method (FDM) calculating magnetic field within the substation environment. BSL is first used to identify the magnetic field distribution for the whole substation in a large mesh grid. This combination reduced by 50% of the simulation time to predict the magnetic field distribution within the whole substation environment compared to using FDM alone. Specific areas of interest are then identified for more detail study using FDM to produce the magnetic field distribution in a finer mesh grid allows a much better field resolution. The calculation result compared with an experimental measurement done at the same substation environment for validation excellent agreement between the modelling and experiment with 3.5% difference. The result then compared with the recommended safety limit standard. The induced current then generated by the magnetic field distribution around it are calculated, thus allows the user to predict the equipment’s compatibility with the distributed field within the substation environment for refurbishment purposes.

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