IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO.
3, JULY 2008
A Simple Method for Evaluating Ground-Fault
Current Transfer at the Transition Station of a
Combined Overhead-Cable Line
Stefano Mangione, Member, IEEE
Abstract—When a substation is fed by a combined overhead-
cable transmission line, a significant part of the ground fault cur-
rent flows through cable sheaths and is discharged into the soil at
the transition station where cables are connected to the overhead
line. Such a phenomenon, known as “fault application transfer,”
may result in high ground potentials at the transition station which
may cause shocks and equipment damage. The scope of this paper
is to present new analytic formulas which can be used for the di-
rect calculation of the fault current transferred at the transition
station and its ground potential rise as well as the substation earth
current. The proposed formulas allow evaluating the influence of
the main factors to the fault application transfer phenomenon and
can be employed, at the preliminary design stage, to easily assess
the most appropriate safety conditions to avoid dangerous effects.
Index Terms—Fault application transfer, ground fault current
distribution, grounding, safety conditions.
I. INTRODUCTION
HEN a ground fault occurs at a substation, the fault
W current returns back to the supply station, in part, dis-
charging into the soil from the substation grounding system,
in part through different metallic return paths either directly
or through other auxiliary ground electrodes [1]. The amount
of the fault current diverted away from the substation ground
grid depends primarily from the conductively and inductively
coupled parameters of the various possible paths. In practice,
a significant part of the fault current is diverted away from
the substation grounding system by overhead ground wires or
cable sheaths of feeding transmission lines, mutually coupled
with the faulted phase conductor; while a smaller quantity is
carried out by neutrals or other return paths of outgoing lines,
which provide only a ground impedance in parallel with the
substation ground grid [2]–[4]. In particular, if the substation
is fed by a cable transmission line, a very large percentage of
the fault current (up to 95% for cable line consisting of three
single core cables) returns directly to the remote source via the
cable sheaths, because of their strong inductive coupling with
phase conductors [5]. Instead, in case of a substation fed by
an overhead line, the return current flowing trough the ground
wire, weakly inductively coupled with phase conductors, varies
from 5–30% of the total fault current in dependence from
Manuscript received November 7, 2006. Paper no. TPWRD-00686-2005.
The author is with the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Telecommu-
nication Engineering, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Palermo 90128, Italy
(e-mail: mangione@unipa.it).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2007.915895
0885-8977/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
1413
number, size, material, and spacing from phase conductors of
the ground wire and from towers’ footing resistance.
When the substation is fed by a combined overhead-cable
transmission line, a significant part of the ground fault current
flows through the grounded cable sheaths and discharges into
the soil at the transition station (TS), where cables are connected
to the overhead line. This is due to the difference in coupling
factors for cable and overhead lines, so that only a small portion
of the return current carried by cable sheaths continues toward
the remote source through the overhead ground wire; instead, a
large portion of such current flows into the soil surrounding the
TS ground electrode and continues toward the source through
the earth. This phenomenon has been presented in literature for
the first time and is called “fault application transfer” by So-
bral et al. [6], referring to an actual transition station and to
the shocks and equipment damages that have occurred there,
as a consequence of high ground potentials caused by a fault to
ground occurring at the receiving end substation.
The phenomenon of the fault application transfer does not
have any relation to the well-known potential transfer effect and
it has not been yet extensively dealt with in literature. Reference
[7] reports the results of a measurement campaign of the ground
fault current distribution during a fault at a substation fed by a
multicombined overhead-cable transmission line. As expected,
measurements have shown that more than 25% of the fault cur-
rent flows between each transition station’s ground electrode
and the surrounding soil, yielding dangerous voltages which ex-
ceed allowable safety limits. In [8], the effects of the fault ap-
plication transfer have been usefully utilized to design the sub-
station ground grid in a dense urban area, as a suitable technical
control of the substation ground potential rise (GPR), in order
to ensure safety conditions, avoiding difficulties in grounding
measurements. Two additional bare copper bonding wires, tied
to the cable sheaths, have also been considered in the final de-
sign to better achieve the fixed objective.
From the aforementioned, it is clear that the fault applica-
tion transfer effects must be properly taken into account at the
design stage of substations fed by a combined overhead-cable
line, both for a more efficient and economic design of a substa-
tion grounding system as well as for safety concerns at the tran-
sition stations. Moreover, it should be considered that problems
concerning ground fault transfer effects are expected to grow
further in the future for a number of reasons:
• the use of underground transmission cables in modern HV
installations continuously increases due to technical and
1414
environmental reasons, so that combined overhead-cable
transmission lines are becoming more frequent in current
applications (e.g., to supply newly built substations in
dense urban or suburban areas from a nearby existing
overhead line);
• an overhead-to-underground transition station occupies a
very small area compared to a conventional substation and,
in some cases, it consists simply of a dead-end steel pole
structure (transition pole); then, its ground electrode, of rel-
atively small size and high resistance, could be inadequate
to maintain the GPR within safety limits in case of a fault
application transfer, also considering the ever-increasing
values of fault currents;
• the practice of using additional bare copper bonding wires
connected to cables sheath, although not strictly necessary
for safety conditions at the receiving end substation, may
magnify fault application transfer effects at the transition
structure in case of a combined overhead-cable feeding
line;
• optical fibers for telecommunication systems are
even more frequently located inside ground wires on
high-voltage overhead transmission lines. The effects of
fault application transfer on GPR at the transition structure
and the closest towers, can expose workers to unsafe con-
ditions during maintenance operations of optical ground
wires on towers where the equipment boxes are located.
Different methods for evaluating ground fault current distri-
bution, in stations supplied by nonuniform lines or overhead
lines combined with cables, have been presented in the liter-
ature [9]–[11]. Nevertheless, these methods and their applica-
tions focus on evaluating the earth current and the related GPR
only at the faulted substation and not also at the transition sta-
tion. In this paper, a simple but accurate method is presented to
calculate, beside the substation earth current, the portion of the
fault current transferred to the transition station during a fault to
ground at a remote substation fed by a combined overhead-cable
line. The method utilizes a compact equivalent model of a com-
bined overhead-cable line, which takes into account all of the
relevant parameters and uses simple equations derived from the
application of Kirchhoff’s laws. Numerical applications show
the efficiency of the proposed method and reveal the main fac-
tors influencing the fault application transfer phenomenon.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
Consider a combined overhead-cable transmission line with
the ground wire and cable sheaths grounded at both ends of
each section, as schematically depicted in Fig. 1. In case of a
phase-to-ground fault at the receiving end substation, the total
fault current is, in part, injected into the soil through the
local grounding grid ; in part, it returns to the remote source,
first through the cable sheath ( ) and then through the over-
head ground wire ( ) as the result of both galvanic connection
and inductive coupling with the faulted conductor. Neverthe-
less, due to the difference in coupling and conductive factors
for cable and overhead-line ground return paths, part of the fault
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 3, JULY 2008
Fig. 1. Ground fault at a substation fed by a combined overhead-cable line.
current flowing in the cable sheaths discharges into the soil from
the transition structure ground electrode ( ), returning to the
supply source through the earth rather than through the over-
head ground wire. In other words, the ground wire of the over-
head line section acts as a “bottleneck” for the return current
carried by the cable sheaths.
At the design stage of the substation grounding system, the
knowledge of the proper earth currents is the basis to make
a safe and economically convenient grounding grid. Moreover,
it should be of prime importance to also evaluate the amount
of the fault current transferred to the transition structure , in
order to make sure that local dangerous voltages do not exceed
safety limits, thus preventing shock hazards due to fault appli-
cation transfer effects. In the following, we assume that the total
ground fault current at the substation is known from prior system
studies.
With reference to the notation used in the scheme of Fig. 1,
the following relationships hold:
(1)
(2)
In order to evaluate the return currents through the cable sheath
and the overhead ground wire , it is necessary to prop-
erly model both the overhead and the cable line sections, taking
into account all of the conductively and inductively coupled
elements of the two sections as well as the proper boundary
conditions.
III. EQUIVALENT CIRCUITS
In this section, the equivalent circuits of both the overhead
and cable line sections are first defined separately and then com-
bined together to represent the whole system of Fig. 1.
A. Cable Line
Consider the cable line consisting of three coated single-core
cables, regularly transposed with the metallic sheaths
cross-bonded along the path and grounded only at both ends. In
case of a ground fault at the supplied station, it can be assumed
that the return current in Fig. 1 is divided equally between
the three sheaths circuit flowing toward the remote source. This
is undoubtedly true with the cables in trefoil formation, but it
MANGIONE: SIMPLE METHOD FOR EVALUATING GROUND-FAULT CURRENT TRANSFER 1415

can be assumed to do so with little error also when the cables

are laid flat [12].
Under such assumption, the cable line section in Fig. 1 can
be represented by the single-line equivalent circuit depicted
in Fig. 2, derived after some mathematical manipulations
of the equations system given in [13]; where is the self
impedance of cable sheaths, all operating in parallel with the
Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit of a cable line during a ground fault.
common ground return, and the voltage source models the
electromotive force’s (emf’s) induction upon the cable sheaths
by the fault current flowing through the phase conductor, due
to inductive coupling.
The following relationships hold:

(3)

with being the mutual impedance between the cable sheaths

and the phase conductors with common ground return.
Both the impedances and can be evaluated by means
of Carson’s theory [14], once the soil resistivity and cable
sheaths characteristics are assigned (i.e., material, size, spacing
between phase conductors, etc.).
B. Overhead Line
The return current in Fig. 1, in part, returns to the remote
source through the ground wire and, in part, discharges into the
soil through the transmission-line tower structures. Apart from
the characteristics of the ground wire (i.e., number, material,
size, spacing from phase conductors), depends also on the
towers footing resistance, whose value is not constant along the
line but varies with the soil resistivity of the sites where the
towers are located. However, it is a common practice at the de-
sign stage to adopt an approximate value, corresponding to the
estimated average value.
If tower footing resistance and span are assumed constant
along the line, the overhead line section in Fig. 1 can be repre-
sented by means of a ladder circuit model composed by a chain
of identical circuits as the number of spans [15]. However,
if only the evaluation of the overall return current is of in-
terest and not the distribution of the fault current along the entire
line, the overhead line section of Fig. 1 can be represented by
the compact equivalent scheme depicted in Fig. 3, obtained by
using the decoupling technique and the reduction method de-
scribed in [16] and [17], respectively.
The current source
(4)
models the fault current component flowing through the ground
wire due to its inductive coupling with the phase conductors,
with being the mutual impedances of the overhead ground
wire and the phase conductors and as the self impedance of
the overhead ground wire.
Both of the impedances and are per span and for
ground return and can be evaluated by means of Carson’s theory
[14], once the soil resistivity and ground wire conductor char-
acteristics are assigned.
Fig. 3. Compact equivalent circuit of an overhead line during a ground fault.
The equivalent -circuit in Fig. 3 models the ground wire
self-impedances and towers footing resistance of the line
spans; its parameters are given by the following expressions
[17]:
(5)
(6)
where is the total number of spans and is defined as
(7)
In the aforementioned equations, represents the equiva-
lent impedance of the ground wire and its connections to ground,
through the towers footing resistances, of an infinite line. Its ex-
pression is [18]
(8)
C. Combined Overhead-Cable Line
Combining the schemes of Figs. 2 and 3 and including the
resistance to ground of grounding systems at the ends of each
line section, the equivalent circuit shown in Fig. 4 is obtained
for a combined overhead-cable line during a fault to ground at
the receiving-end substation.
In practice, referring to an actual overhead transmission line,
the value of the impedance , defined by (5), is much greater
compared to the other impedances in the scheme; hence, the
current flowing through is very small and can be neglected
with a little error. With this assumption, the compact equivalent
model shown in Fig. 5 can be derived.
The following expressions for the earth current at the faulted
substation and the fault current transferred to the TS can be
1416 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 3, JULY 2008

Fig. 4. Compact equivalent circuit of a combined overhead-cable line sup-

plying a phase-to-ground fault. Fig. 6. Substation earth current against cable line length.

The underground cable section consists of a trefoil formation

of coated single-core cables with the following characteristics:
50 mm copper sheath, geometric mean radius of the sheath of
0.0434 m, and geometric mean distance (GMD) between phase
conductors of 0.25 m.
The overhead line section is first considered with a steel
ground wire over its entire length, then better conducting
materials are taken into consideration; the relevant ground
Fig. 5. Compact equivalent model. wires characteristics are given in Table V. For all of the studied
cases, the GMD between the ground wire and phase conductors
was 8.21 m, while the average span length and towers’ footing
easily obtained, applying Kirchhoff’s voltage and current laws
resistance were assumed to be 200 m and 10 , respectively.
to the scheme of Fig. 5, after some mathematical manipulations:
Moreover, the overhead line section has been considered to
(9) be 10 km long. This is because, in practice, the effect of the
overhead line length on the fault current distribution does not
(10) change with lengths of more than 15–20 spans.
The other relevant data are: specific soil resistance along both
where line section 50 m, substation ground resistance ( ) 0.1 ,
source ground resistance ( ) 0.5 .
(11) For a better interpretation of the results, currents are ex-
pressed in per-unit absolute values as a part of the total
and parameters and are the reduction factor of cable substation fault current, as is supposedly known.
sheaths and ground wire, respectively, defined as
A. Effects of Cable Line Length and TS Ground Resistance
(12) The curves illustrated in Figs. 6 and 7 obtained using (9) and
(10) yield the substation earth current and the TS transferred
(13) current, respectively, as a function of the cable line length for
different values of the TS ground resistance .
The GPR at the transition station can then be obtained as It can be observed that the distribution of the fault current
between the substation grid and the TS electrode is dramatically
(14) affected by the length of the cable line section. For example,
assuming , when km, the percentage of the
fault current dissipating from the substation ground system is
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS 79% and from the TS electrode, it is 19%, while when
Some numerical applications are presented in order to vali- km, they are 37% and 46%, respectively.
date the proposed method and to quantify the effects of the fault Moreover, as can be seen, the TS ground resistance influences
application transfer phenomenon. With this in mind, only the in- the current dissipating from the TS ground electrode more than
fluence of the main factors is considered: line length, TS ground the substation earth current. The higher the TS ground resistance
resistance, and the type of material used for the overhead ground is, the lower the return current is injected at the TS. Neverthe-
wire. less, a high value of does not imply better safety conditions
Let us assume that the combined overhead-cable line, which at the transition structure in terms of ground potentials. This is
supplies the receiving-end substation in Fig. 1, is a 110-kV line. shown in Fig. 8, where the GPR at the TS calculated using (14)
MANGIONE: SIMPLE METHOD FOR EVALUATING GROUND-FAULT CURRENT TRANSFER
Fig. 7. Fault current transferred to the TS against the cable line length.
Fig. 8. Ground potential rise at the transition station against cable line length.
TABLE I
EFFECT OF GROUND WIRE ON THE SUBSTATION EARTH CURRENT, I
is reported, as a function of the cable line length and for dif-
ferent values of . tire length, saved at a certain number of receiving end spans,
B. Effects of Ground Wire Material
The effect of the type of material used for the overhead
ground wire is presented in Tables I and II, where values of
and obtained with aluminium/steel and copper/steel ground
wires, when km, are compared with those obtained
with the steel conductor. As can be seen, good conducting
ground wires considerably reduce both the substation earth
current and the TS transferred current; however, the benefits
obtained on the latter are much greater. Furthermore, the higher
the TS ground resistance is, the more the decrement of both
currents is.
Note that the values in Tables I and II are obtained by means
of (9) and (10), respectively, considering the overhead ground
wire uniform over its entire length. Nevertheless, similar values
should be obtained if the better conducting ground wire is used
only in a limited number of the line’s receiving end spans [10].
1417
TABLE II
EFFECT OF GROUND WIRE ON THE TS TRANSFERRED CURRENT, I
TABLE III
COMPARISON OF CALCULATION RESULTS OF I , FOR A NONUNIFORM GROUND
WIRE WITH DIFFERENT NUMBERS OF TERMINAL SPANS AND VALUES OF R
TABLE IV
COMPARISON OF CALCULATION RESULTS OF I , FOR NONUNIFORM GROUND
WIRE WITH A DIFFERENT NUMBER OF TERMINAL SPANS AND VALUES OF R
In practice, for the case examined here, in order to obtain similar
effects on the earth current reduction at both the faulted and
the transition stations, it should be sufficient to apply the better
conducting ground wire in a maximum of 15–20 terminal spans
as shown in the next subsection.
C. Method Validation
According to the aforementioned discussion, consider now
the overhead line section with the steel ground wire over its en-
where the copper/steel conductor is used. By applying the pro-
posed method, based on the compact model of Fig. 5, calcula-
tions are made considering only the better conducting ground
wire as it was installed over the entire line length ( ).
Tables III and IV compare, for different numbers of terminal
spans with copper/steel conductor, the results obtained in such
a manner with those obtained by a computer program which em-
ploys a more rigorous method [19], based mainly on the over-
head line complete circuit model and the solution technique pre-
sented in [15]. As can be seen, the maximum error in values of
currents and in all of the studied cases is negligibly small;
less than 4% in cases of 15 terminal spans with better conducting
ground wires and about 1% in cases of 20 terminal spans.
V. CONCLUSION
The compact equivalent model of a combined overhead-cable
line presented in this paper allows deriving relatively simple
1418
TABLE V
OVERHEAD GROUND WIRE SIZE AND TYPE
expressions for a quick and correct evaluation of the fault cur-
rent distribution between the faulted substation and the transi-
tion station. Numerical results show that in practical cases, a
great portion of the fault current that appears at a remote re-
ceiving-end substation could involve the transition station, de-
pending mainly on its ground resistance value and on the type of
material used for the overhead ground wire. In this situation, the
local ground electrode at the transition station, generally small
and with high resistance, could be inadequate to maintain the
GPR within safety limits.
The proposed formulae can be employed at the design stage
to easily assess safety conditions and enhancements at the tran-
sition station, which can be achieved by using different ground
wire materials, also when a nonuniform overhead ground wire is
used . The accuracy of the proposed compact model is demon-
strated by comparing the obtained results with those obtained
from the more rigorous method based on the complete circuit
model.
REFERENCES
[1] IEEE Guide for Safety in AC Substation Grounding, IEEE Std. 80,
2000.
[2] D. L. Garret, J. G. Myers, and S. G. Patel, “Determination of maximum
substation system fault current using graphical analysis,” IEEE Trans.
Power Del., vol. PWRD-2, no. 2, pp. 725–732, Apr. 1987.
[3] A. P. Meliopoulos, R. P. Webb, and E. B. Joy, “Computation of max-
imum earth current in substation switchyards,” IEEE Trans. Power App.
Syst., vol. PAS-102, no. 9, pp. 3131–3139, Sep. 1983.
[4] J. M. Nahman, V. B. Djordjevic, and D. D. Salamon, “Grounding ef-
fects of HV and MV underground cables associated with urban distri-
bution substation,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 111–116,
Jan. 2002.
[5] L. M. Popović, “Determination of the reduction factor for feeding cable
lines consisting of three single-core cables,” IEEE Trans. Power Del.,
vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 736–743, Jul. 2003.
[6] S. T. Sobral, J. O. Barbosa, and V. S. Costa, “Ground potential rise
characteristics of urban step-down substations fed by power cables
– A practical example,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 3, no. 2, pp.
1564–1572, Apr. 1988.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 3, JULY 2008
[7] J. Waes, M. Riet, F. Provoost, and S. Cobben, “Measurement of the
current distribution near a substation during a single phase to ground
fault,” presented at the CIRED 17th Int. Conf. on Electricity Distribu-
tion, Barcelona, Spain, 2003.
[8] J. E. T. Villas, D. Mukhedkar, V. R. Fernandes, and A. C. Magalhaes,
“Ground grid design of a transition station system – A typical example
of fault transfer,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 124–129,
Jan. 1990.
[9] L. M. Popovic, “Practical method for evaluating ground fault current
distribution in station supplied by an unhomogeneous line,” IEEE
Trans. Power Del., vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 722–727, Apr. 1997.
[10] J. Nahman, “Compact models of nonuniform lines for earthing-system
analysis,” in Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., Gen. Transm. Distrib., Jun. 2001,
vol. 148, pp. 579–582.
[11] L. M. Popovic, “Reduction factor of feeding lines that have a cable and
overhead section,” presented at the CIRED 17th Int. Conf. on Elec-
tricity Distribution, Barcelona, Spain, 2003.
[12] IEEE Guide for the Application of Sheath-Bonding Methods for Single-
Conductor Cables and the Calculation of Induced Voltages and Cur-
rents in Cable Sheaths, IEEE Std. 575, 1988.
[13] A Guide for Assessing the Rise of Earth Potential at Substation Sites
Elect. Assoc. Eng. Recommendation, 1986, S.34.
[14] C. F. Wagner and R. D. Evans, Symmetrical Components. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1933.
[15] R. Verna and D. Mukhedkar, “Ground fault current distribution in sub-
station, towers and ground wire,” IEEE Trans. Power App. Syst., vol.
PAS-98, no. 3, pp. 724–730, May 1979.
[16] S. T. Sobral, V. S. Costa, M. S. Campos, and D. Mukhedkar, “Dimen-
sioning of nearby substations interconnected ground system,” IEEE
Trans. Power Del., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 1605–1614, Apr. 1988.
[17] L. M. Popovic, “Practical method for evaluating ground fault current
distribution in station towers and ground wire,” IEEE Trans. Power
Del., vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 123–128, Jan. 1998.
[18] J. Endrenyi, “Analysis of transmission tower potentials during ground
faults,” IEEE Trans. Power App. Syst., vol. PAS-86, no. 10, pp.
1274–1283, Oct. 1967.
[19] P. Buccheri, S. Mangione, R. Miceli, E. Finocchiaro, and G. Nicola,
“Drenaggio della corrente di guasto a terra da parte di funi di guardia
e guaine metalliche di cavi,” (in Italian) L’Energia Elettr., vol. 70, pp.
323–331, Jul./Aug. 1993.
Stefano Mangione (M’06) was born in Raffadali,
Italy, on January 23, 1955. He received the electrical
engineering degree from the Faculty of Engineering,
University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy.
Currently, he is a Full Professor of Electrical
Power Systems at the University of Palermo. He
was a Researcher with the University of Palermo in
1981 and from 1992 to 1994, he was an Associate
Professor at the University of Cagliari, Cagliari,
Italy. His main research interests include grounding
systems and electrical safety in high-voltage substa-
tions, voltage stability, and distribution automation.