The effect of magnetic field on optimal design of a rigid-bus substation

Substation rigid-bus design involves electrical, mechanical, and structural considerations. In order to integrate these considerations into one document, IEEE in cooperation with ANSI has issued a comprehensive guide for design of substation rigid-bus systems. The design process based on this guide involves substantial manual effort to integrate all types of calculations. This is particularly evident when the computations have to be repeated several times in order to arrive at a more economic design. In an earlier paper the authors presented a mathematical model and computer program which automates the design process. There has been concern expressed about the possible biological effects of low level magnetic fields. In view of this, a new design constraint taking into account the limits imposed on the magnitude of the magnetic field can be added to the design guidelines. In this paper the authors introduce such a constraint and show how the magnitude of allowable magnetic field at a specified distance from the station buses affects the optimal design of a rigid bus substation