A Systematic Method for the Design of Earthing System for Low-voltage Installations

Earthing system plays an essential role in electrical systems in terms of safety for people in the vicinity against the hazard of electric shocks as well as protection and proper operation of equipment during the incidence of electric faults by providing a low-impedance path that can dissipate fault currents to the conductive mass of earth. Engineers are faced with the design of adequate earthing systems that comply with national standards and regulations which apparently incorporate a variety of earthing methods and various formulae to obtain the design parameters such as the earthing resistance and conductor size. Manual calculation of such parameter makes the design quite laborious, tedious, and time-consuming but could conceivably be performed much quicker by a computer software. This paper presents a proposed step-by-step approach for the design of a reliable and effective earthing system for low-voltage installations. The main objective of this work is to develop a computer-aided and easy-to-use template which could be useful for industry practitioners in Malaysia who are responsible with earthing system design. A simple auto calculation software template was developed using Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The template was tested by a consulting company in order to meet their industry needs. The developed template provides a technically acceptable computer simulation and yet a low-cost solution to the complex issue of effective design of earthing systems for low-voltage installations.