Rod Insertion TDR for Detecting Corrosion Damage in Vertical Grounding Electrodes

Faults in a grounding network pose a serious threat to power system equipment protection and worker safety. A large number of vertical electrodes is used in a grounding network and break-points in these due to soil induced corrosion is one of the prime reasons for faults. We present a rod insertion time domain reflectometry (TDR) technique for vertical grounding electrode break-point detection. A secondary bare rod is inserted adjacent to the grounding electrode while a fast risetime pulse is continuously applied to excite a transverse electromagnetic (TEM) wave that propagates along the rods and reflects back from the break-point. The reflected signals for different depths of the secondary rod are analyzed to identify the location and severity of the break-point. We show that fault detection is possible without prior knowledge of soil electrical parameters. To show the feasibility of the proposed technique, a full wave simulation approach is used to evaluate the wideband input impedance of the grounding and inserted rod system and then FFT is applied to obtain TDR responses. The results show the method is capable of detecting faults for a wide range of soil conductivity for a system bandwidth of 300 MHz.