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Ground Rod Interlinks with Iron versus Copper

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Abstract

Research on electrical grounding has been in-depth over the past 180 years but recently due to the ever-increasing price of copper, theft of copper from grounding systems has become a problem for electrical systems. The result of an improper grounding can be very serious to the integrity of electrical systems and fatal for the manpower maintaining substations. Here, humans switch off the HV systems then switch on the Ground Switches and then confidently start working on them; not suspecting that the copper connections between ground rods (located at one feet below ground) have been stolen; thereby getting electrocuted by capacitive or inductive charges from the HV systems. Therefore, the objective of this research is to prove that iron joining cables can replace the currently specified 35 mm2 copper cables to join ground rods. Ten ground rods were joined with 2.5 mm2 Cu and Fe cables over a period of a year and the earth resistance was collected and the data were analyzed. The conclusion is that it is possible to replace Cu with a totally Fe grounding system, without Cu coating.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University College of Technology Sarawak (UCTS), Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia

    Prashobh Karunakaran, Mohammad Shahril Osman & Imelda Justine

  2. Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

    Prashanth Karunakaran & Shanthi Karunakaran

  3. National Institute of Technology Tomakomai College, 443 Nishikioka, Tomakomai, Hokkaido, 059-1275, Japan

    Arjun Karunakaran

  4. Curtin University Malaysia, Miri, Malaysia

    Man Djun Lee

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  1. Prashobh Karunakaran
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  2. Mohammad Shahril Osman
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Correspondence to Prashobh Karunakaran.

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Karunakaran, P., Osman, M.S., Justine, I. et al. Ground Rod Interlinks with Iron versus Copper. J. Inst. Eng. India Ser. B 102, 957–967 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40031-021-00590-w

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