Mitigation of lightning-induced overvoltages in medium Voltage distribution lines by means of periodical grounding of shielding wires and of surge arresters: modeling and experimental validation

In this paper, we investigate the effect of periodically-grounded shielding wires and surge arresters on the attenuation of lightning-induced voltages. We discuss the adequacy of the commonly made simplification of assuming the shielding wire at ground potential, instead of being treated as one of the conductors of the multiconductor system. We also compare then the mitigation effect of shielding wires with that achievable by the insertion of surge arresters along the line. The computation results are first validated by means of calculations obtained by other authors referring to a simple line configuration, and then by means of experimental results obtained using a reduced-scale line model illuminated by a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NEMP) simulator. One of the main conclusions is that the effectiveness of shielding wires and surge arresters depends mostly on the spacing between two adjacent grounding points or surge arresters.