Proceedings of PAC09, Vancouver, BC, Canada WE6RFP050

THE CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF TPS GROUNDING SYSTEM

T. S. Ueng, Y. C. Lin, J. C. Chang, H. S. Wang, NSRRC, Taiwan

Abstract [1]. The information of strata and related geological

The TPS (Taiwan Photon Source) of NSRRC is in the characteristics are also used to analyze the soil resistivity
design stage now. The grounding system is crucial to the of construction site. During two field-boring
safety issues, the electrical reference level, the electrical investigations, there were more than 20 vertical bored
noise and the EMI problems. In order to provide a high holes investigated. Among them there were 11 holes
quality electrical environment, the grounding system having depth more than 30 m down from the earth surface.
should be designed carefully. The soil resistivity of the Fig. 1 shows the soil boring log from one of the boring
construction site was investigated first. Many different investigations. Fig. 2 shows one of the site strata profiles.
configurations of the ground grid layouts were simulated From the boring investigations and soil test the strata
and compared. Beside the horizontal ground-conductors, distribution of construction site shows that the strata are
the vertical ground-electrodes of 30 m are considered to generally uniform in the horizontal direction. From the
be installed below the ground and they will reach the result of field survey, within 30 m under the earth surface
ground water level in hopes of minimizing the resistance the strata can be roughly divided into 3 layers. They are:
of ground grid. The main goal is to obtain a ground grid (1) the top layer is mainly silt clay and sand mixed with
with resistance lower than 0.2 ohm. A rectangular ground gravel. It is about 5 m depth under the surface; (2) the
grid will also be installed under the new utility building. It second layer is mainly gravel mixed with sand and is
will be connected to the ground grid of TPS to further distributed under first layer to approximately 28 m below
reduce the resistance of whole grounding system, and also the ground; (3) the third layer is rock bed, which is
to eliminate the potential difference between them. mainly silt stone and weathering sand, and is distributed
about 23 m below the ground. The natural water content
INTRODUCTION for these 3 layers are roughly 8% to 30% for the first layer,
10% to 25% for the second layer and 14% to 19% for the
Taiwan Light Source (TLS) is an accelerator facility
third layer.
which provides high quality synchrotron radiation for the
academic and scientific sectors to pursue excellent
researches. After several years of service, the space of
TLS has saturated with equipments. In order to provide
the scientists with more space and better facilities to
perform more advanced researches, a project has been
made to construct a new storage ring of higher electron
energy, 3.0 GeV, with more advanced features. The new
storage ring will be constructed near the original 1.3 GeV
storage ring. There are some overlaps in the buildings
between the present TLS facility and the new TPS
building due to the limitation of the construction site. But,
the whole idea is to make the construction of new TPS
building without severe interfere with the operation of Figure 1: Soil boring log at TPS construction site [1].
TLS. At the beginning of the construction of new TPS
building, the installation of ground grid should be done
first, since it will be installed under the new building. A B

The design and installation of ground grid for the

conventional building is much easier. For the accelerator
facility, in addition to providing the safety for the
personnel and the equipments, the disturbance of fault
current or electromagnetic wave to the equipments should
also be minimized. This will require stringent rules to the
design. Thus, the ground grid of TPS is designed very
carefully. Our goal is to build a ground grid with ground
resistance lower than 0.2 Ω, and also provide functions to
minimize the noisy signals, beside the safety issue.
Figure 2: Site strata profile [1]; A, B mark approximately
GEOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS the boundary of TPS building.
For the construction of TPS, NSRRC has twice
requested engineering consultant companies to carry out The underground water may have important effect on
the geological boring investigations of construction site the soil resistivity. According to the boring investigation,
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WE6RFP050 Proceedings of PAC09, Vancouver, BC, Canada

the underground water level is at about 95 m above the vertical rods under the first and third ring and 12 vertical
sea level, which is about 15 m below the TPS designed rods under the inner ring. In the present design, all of the
floor level. The corresponding pH value is about 7.1 and vertical rods are 30 m long. There is possibility to use 15
the chloride ion density is about 2.2 ~ 15.3 mg/L. It m vertical rods under the third ring. As for the second ring,
should not have erosive and worsening effects on the beside 2 vertical rods for the extracting and injecting
electrodes. kickers, there is no other vertical ground electrode. The
electrodes in the outside ring are mainly for the
DESIGN OF GROUND GRID equipments in the beam-lines and laboratories. The
second ring is for the equipments in the accelerator tunnel.
Estimation of Soil Resistivity The third ring is for the control and instrumentation areas,
In order to calculate the resistance of ground grid, the and the inner ring is for other equipments which are used
soil resistivity at the construction site is essential. The to accelerate the electron beam inside the accelerator.
soil resistivity can not be determined easily due to the There will be also a ground grid under the new utility
complexity of the formation of earth strata. The soil building. The design of its ground grid is a simple
boring log at the construction site from the previous rectangular horizontal type (7×6) with 3 m vertical rods
geological exploration, Fig. 2, can be used to estimate the under the horizontal grid.
soil resistivity. At the same time, the resistivity image
profiling of direct current electrical resistance has been
done at the construction site, Fig. 3. After carefully
investigating the data, we estimate that 15 m under the
surface the resistivity is mostly at between 100 Ω⋅m and
300 Ω⋅m, with some local areas having higher resistivity
up to 500 Ω⋅m. The resistivity at depth between 15 m and
30 m below the TPS floor is estimated between 50 Ω⋅m
and 100 Ω⋅m. Since there is underground water 15 m
below the TPS floor, we would estimate the soil
resistivity is around 70 Ω⋅m or lower.

Figure 3: The profile of electrical stratum at construction

site [1].

Calculation of Ground Resistances

While there are many researchers have tried to obtain Figure 4: The layout of TPS ground grid. The red lines
the analytical solutions for various types of ground grids, indicate the horizontal grid conductors and the blue
due to the complexity of ground structure and different dots indicate the vertical ground rods.
layouts of ground grids which might be used, the
analytical equations we can use today are still limited to During our calculation of the ground resistance two-
some simple grid layouts. In our study of the TPS ground layer soil model is used due to the capability of computer
grid, the commercial computer program CYMGRD [2] is software CYMGRD. CYMGRD supports at most only
used to assist us to calculate the parameters of ground “two-layer” soil model analysis. From the geology
grid. We would use it to study the equivalent resistance exploration result, the strata distribution of the
of ground grid, the ground-electrode sizing, the potential construction site shows uniform. A “two-layer” soil model
rise, the mesh and step voltage. analysis seems to be sufficient for us to design a safe
The layout of TPS ground grid has been modified many grounding system.
times according to the necessity. The latest update was During the designing process, many pairs of top and
following the last major change in the equipment lower layer soil resistivities have been used to calculate
arrangement in the TPS building. The present design of the ground resistance and the associated parameters. The
ground grid for the TPS consists of 4 circular horizontal typical soil resistivity used is 200 Ω⋅m for the top layer
ground-electrodes, which are about 2 m below the floor, and 80 Ω⋅m for the bottom layer. With these resistivities
and 62 vertical ground-electrodes, Fig. 4. There are 24 the new utility building will give us ground resistance
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 Proceedings of PAC09, Vancouver, BC, Canada WE6RFP050

about 1.2 Ω. The ground resistance of TPS ground grid is Further Improvements
about 0.21 Ω. These two ground grid will be combined The ground resistance reduction agents have been
together to give a total ground resistance about 0.19 Ω, proven to be able to decrease the ground resistance. It has
Fig. 5a and 5b. This result will meet our designed goal. the function to increase the diameter of electrode by
From the geological consideration, the underground water modifying the soil surrounding the electrode. In 2002 the
may further reduce the lower level resistivity to lower improvement of ground grid of TLS was to add nine 30 m
than 80 Ω. In this situation, we will expect that the value vertical electrodes around the TLS building and add
of ground resistance becomes even lower. Besides bentonite as ground enhancement material. It decreases
obtaining a lower than 0.2 Ω ground resistance, the guide the TLS ground resistance to about 0.2 Ω. During the
line described in the “IEEE Std 80-2000” [3] are followed installation of TPS ground grid, we also intend to add
in the design of the TPS ground grid. ground enhancement material with resistivity lower than
0.2 Ω⋅m to further reduce the ground resistance. Also, at
least 12 chemical ground electrodes with length 30 m will
be used for the vertical electrodes to improve the
performance of TPS ground grid.

CONCLUSION
The TPS grounding system is being designed to have a
ground resistance lower than 0.2 Ω. Our design principle
is to follow the guidelines described in “IEEE Std 80-
2000”. Beside the general function of providing the safety
to the personnel during normal and fault conditions, it
assures correct operation of electrical and electronic
devices and also to prevent their damages. Some other
effects which relate to the electromagnetic interference
are also been studied in hopes of minimizing this type of
Figure 5a: The TPS ground grid design used in the
problems.
computer simulation. The rectangular grid is for the new
utility building and the circular one is for the TPS
building. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors are appreciated the assistance of members
of the Construction Management Group to provide the
information about the site geological exploration data.
Special thanks should give to J. C. Hsu for his
explanation of the geological data and also providing a lot
of geological information.

REFERENCES
[1] NSRRC and China Engineering Consultant Inc.,
“Technology Services of Site Geology Exploration
and Micro-vibration Measurement”, (Dec. 2005).
[2] CYMGrd 6.3, rev. 7, CYME International T&D Inc.
(2006) .
[3] IEEE Std 80-2000.

Figure 5b: The TPS ground grid design used in the

computer simulation, a 3-D view.

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