An Assessment of Power System Stability Using Resonant Grounding Technique

Resonant grounding is efficient system for grounding electrical appliances. Unlike solidly grounded system where the fault current developed keeps circulating in the system causing arcing and other heat losses which end up causing total power failure. The action of resonant grounding in Nigerian power system was critically studied in this work. In Nigerian power system, solid grounding has been the only method of grounding electrical systems. As a result, consistency in power failure has continued to characterize Nigerian power system. To see how effective the system could be in Nigerian power system, a 66KV network was modeled and simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK. Results show that when the star point of a transformer connected to five feeder system was resonantly grounded, the quality of power supply in the substation was improved by 40% after one year of operation. Again, when used to ground generator turbine, the fatigue experienced by the generator due to torsional vibration was reduced to the barest minimum. Thus, the ground fault neutralizer would work effectively in Nigerian power system, in order to improve the quality of power supply.