Grounding System Adequacy of HV/MV Substations in Areas With Reduced Accessibility

The adequacy of grounding systems has to be verified periodically in the operational time. With urban development and buildings growth adjacent to power systems as HV/MV substations, it is very rare to have area around with sufficient accessibility for installing the potential and current electrodes. This paper discusses a safety criterion to verify the effectiveness of a grounding system. This criterion suggests conservative tests for both ground potential rise and touch voltages and step voltages that allow to verify the grounding systems effectiveness in areas with reduced accessibility and to monitor its evolution in the time.