Deployment of standalone Software for Performance Analysis of

Substation Grounding System

P. K. Jani1, Kaustubh A. Vyas2, J.G. Jamnani3
1 P. G. Scholar, Kalol Institute of Technology & Research Center, Kalol, Gujarat, India
2 Dept. of Elect. Engg, Venus International College of Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India
3 Dept. of Elect. Engg, School of Technology, PDPU Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India
Abstract Substation grounding system being very much important part
of entire power system, it deserves considerable care and attention,
particularly at design stage, primarily to ensure electrical safety of persons
working within or near substations. This work is mainly concerned with
development of standalone software which eases design of grounding
system as per IEEE standard. Here windows standalone application has
been developed using MATLAB Graphical User Interface Development
Environment as a programming platform and mathematical computing tool
as well. Application developed here is found to be quite useful and
effective software for electrical engineers working in power systems. With
further development, it is proposed to become effective tool in the
professional field of grounding system design. This work explores
applicability of MATLAB for software / application development and can be
quite appreciable for engineers not expert in software languages but can
use MATLAB for their day to day use. Here sample problem is solved to
demonstrate capabilities of the software developed. Its performance is
validated by comparing the results given by it with those obtained by
commercially used software ETAP. Comparison of the results proves
technical soundness of the software.
Keywords: Grounding, MATLAB, Standalone Software, Safety, Substation

1. INTRODUCTION
On its way from generating station to the end consumers, through extensive transmission and
distribution network, electrical power passes through number of different kind of substations. Thus
substations can be called as heart of the entire power system because integrity of operation of
complete power system depends to a considerable extent on reliable and successful operation of
substations. It is therefore essential to exercise at most care while designing and building a
substation. Grounding system plays crucial role in the performance of a substation as it provides
place for connecting system neutral points, equipment body and support structures to the earth. It
also ensures safety of working personnel within the substation and enables earth fault detection
and protection. It provides path for discharging the earth currents from neutrals of equipments,
faults, surge arrestors, overhead shielding wires etc. It keeps step and touch potential within
tolerable limits. Hence properly designed and installed grounding system ensures reliable
performance of electrical substation, safety of persons working within or near substation and limits
the ground potential rise GPR within acceptable levels. Absence of safe and effective grounding
system can result in mal-operation or non-operation of control and protective devices thereby
disturbing operation of complete power system. Hence great care should be taken while designing
grounding system of any substation, primarily to ensure electrical safety of persons working within
or near substations. Substation grounding system being an essential part of the overall electrical
system, its design is also of very much importance [1, 2].
Design of grounding system is an area in which there has been extensive study and analysis for
last five decades. Many methods have been are based on professional experience, on semi
empirical works, on experimental data obtained from scale models and laboratory tests or intuitive
idea [3 - 8].
This paper mainly describes development and use of software Grounding System Analyzer
(GSA). It is designed using MATLAB as a mathematical computing tool as well as programming

platform. Here GUI development facility of MATLAB (GUIDE) is exploited to design user friendly
and also technically well proven software. In order to validate the technical performance of
software developed here, a sample design problem has been solved by GSA in uniform soil for
safety performance analysis of substation grounding system. Results obtained by it are compared
with those given by Ground Grid Systems (GGS) module of ETAP power station. Comparison of
results obtained by both the software clearly shows that GSA gives fairly correct results for
grounding system design and it is found to be trustworthy tool for design of grounding systems of
HV / EHV substations as far as performance of grounding system is evaluated at power frequency.
2. INTRODUCTION TO MATLAB GUI DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT
2.1. Why MATLAB for GUI development?

In addition to simple coding, MATLAB also allows creation of graphical user interfaces [8, 9].
Though there are many advanced programming tools available for GUI based programming
systems that allow creation of GUI applications, there are numerous persuasive arguments that
support MATLAB as GUI development tool. Following are some significant reasons that describe
encouraging applicability of MATLAB for GUI development [10].
High level script based development
Operating system independent GUI applications
User inter activity and real time measurements
Also GUI developed by MATLAB works satisfactorily on various operating systems with little or
no modifications.
Previously in order to develop software, toolbox or standalone applications, one had to rely on
C++, Visual basic, or Java. For a computer science or information technology student it is easy to
program in these environments but for other science and engineering students this pose a problem
since they are not familiar with these programs and may not have excellent programming
expertise. Nevertheless MATLAB also has very nice inherent GUI development environment called
as GUIDE that allows creation of GUI so that the code becomes more user friendly. It is similar to
VB for creating GUI. It also includes low-level commands that allow user to fully customize the
appearance of graphics as well as to build complete Graphical User Interfaces on MATLAB
applications. Also with the help of deployment tool it can deploy windows standalone application
so that the application can be used even in absence of MATLAB.
2.2. Salient features of MATLAB GUIDE for GUI development?

Math Works has provided MATLAB programmers with a set of structured event driven components
in the form of user interface controls (uicontrols) and menus (uimenus) that can easily be
assembled and used to create GUIs. The fundamental power of GUI is that they provide a means
through which individuals can communicate with the computer without programming commands.
These tools can be used to increase the productivity of a user or to provide a window to the
sophistication and power of a MATLAB application for people with little or no MATLAB
programming experience [11]. When one already uses MATLAB for solving the problems in the
field of engineering and / or science and has number of functions and scripts for solving specific
problems on hand, MATLAB GUI development Environment (GUIDE) offers quite efficient and
easy opportunity for building GUI by directly using the already available code within the GUI and
thus saving large programming effort. This integration of MATLAB script and function files with the
figure files can prove priceless and programmer friendly also in addition to being user friendly. No
doubt script files and function files in MATLAB are quite efficient in solving majority of problems in
various fields of engineering, technology and science; often situations arise where user
interactivity is essential for understanding or solving particular problem.
3. DEVELOPMENT OF GROUNDING SYSTEM ANALYZER SOFTWARE
3.1 General

As mentioned earlier, MATLAB GUIDE allows creation of GUI so that the code becomes more
user-friendly. Here software named Grounding System Analyzer (GSA) has been developed
using MATLAB GUIDE. GSA is preliminary developed in order to assist the design engineer in the
analyzing designs of substation grounding system. This is for the first time that such stand alone
application for grounding system design is developed using MATLAB GUIDE. This explores
applicability of MATLAB for GUI development that helps programmers familiar with MATLAB
coding in terms of application deployment. With the help of MATLAB GUIDE standalone
applications can be developed for professional use or for educational or training program. GSA is
found to be quite useful for electrical engineering students for gaining basic knowledge about

grounding system design. Additionally this is highly praiseworthy for substation designer in order to
get very clear first idea about preliminary design of grounding system design based on which
detailed designs as per site specific requirements can be developed. With continuous
development going on, it is proposed to be standalone professional software for design of
substation grounding system. Here only the algorithm developed for implementation of theoretical
concepts of grounding system design in the software and application of optimization are
discussed. Readers interested in grounding system design are referred to [2, 12] for further details
and methodology related to substation grounding system design procedure.
3.2 Algorithm for working of GSA

In addition to analysing grounding system as per IEEE guide lines, GSA can analyze system by
using FE analysis method. It also allows soil model extraction from earth resistivity test data. GSA
is designed to work for uniform soil as well as for two layered soils for analysing performance of
grounding system as per IEEE guidelines or by rigorous analysis method.

Fig. 1: Main page of GSA software

Fig. 1 shows main page of GSA that allows access to all other input, analysis and output modules.
It takes main details related to substation grounding system design such as shape of ground grid
and voltage rating of the substation. This page allows access to all other input - output modules.
By accessing various other input pages like grid layout, soil model and system data, further details
about grounding system design can be entered. Report for the designed grounding system can
also be generated from here which will be Microsoft word document. Equations given in [12, 13]
and other derived from relevant literature are converted into MATLAB code and implemented as
per algorithm shown in fig. 2 which describes flow chart for working of GSA.
3.3 Role of GUIDE in development of standalone software GSA
GUI development environment in MATLAB allows creation of GUIs simply in drag and drop
manner. Properties of various GUI components can be managed by property inspector tool. Also
m file containing code for displaying the components on GUI and call-backs that handle the
behaviour of GUI can be generated from the GUIDE itself. Next step is inclusion of code in the m files for various call-backs depending upon which actual functioning of the entire GUI will be
decided. When one has solved certain problem(s) with the help of MATLAB coding and has script
and / or function files already available, these can be directly used with the m file generated by
GUIDE for GUI designed therein. Here simple script files and function files are used to implement
the grounding system algorithm in the software form. In order to obtain input data for design of
substation grounding system, various GUI files have been designed with the help of GUIDE of
MATLAB. Data obtained from user with the help of GUIs in an interactive mode is then
manipulated by using different script files and function files in order to obtain optimal design of
substation grounding system as per user requirements. The program solves the design equations,
by fulfilling all the safety and geometrical constraints. GSA analyzes performance of the proposed
grounding system by rigorous analysis method implementing FE analysis concepts.

Fig. 2: Algorithm for working of GSA software

GUI developed with the help of MATLAB runs well in MATLAB environment, however if not
deployed as standalone application it may fail if appropriate version of MATLAB is not available.
MATLAB compiler add-on facilitates standalone application deployment which can be used by
person with little knowledge of software engineering. However in order to develop such
applications using MATLAB certain things are very much important. Main consideration while

deploying any GUI as standalone application using MATLAB is that all data transfer between
various GUIs should be implicit i.e. data transfer mechanism should be such that it facilitates
smooth data transfer between all the GUIs which are packed in a project file to generate
executable application. There are variety of methods for sharing data between various GUIs in
MATLAB [9], however all of them does not necessarily function well while application has to be
deployed as standalone one. Here use of application data (appdata) is made for data sharing
between various input, processing and output GUIs, script and function files. Handle passing
scheme successfully facilitates data transfer completely within the application without need of
generating MAT files and loading and opening of data files. Here graphic handles is carefully taken
care of by and it serves the purpose of making data transfer smooth and implicit to the standalone
application even in the absence of MATLAB. Certain instances are observed when an application
runs properly in presence of MATLAB but fails when deployed as standalone application which
has to work with MATLAB run time compiler. Here all such possibilities are avoided by special data
sharing mechanism. Creation of any MAT file is avoided here and data is not allowed to travel out
of the application when it has been compiled as standalone application. Because of this
mechanism the application becomes standalone in a true sense i.e. it works satisfactorily even
when MATLAB is not available. This is true for applications involving any no. of GUI files, script
files and function files. This may not look like a big task for professional software engineer.
However the standalone application deployment using MATLAB and that too in such situation
when the application employs several GUI files and m files altogether has been done probably for
the first time in the field of electrical engineering. Small standalone GUIs are found to be
developed at many places, however such large and professional like application has been
developed for the first time in this countryside. This opens a door for standalone application
deployment for educational and training purpose even by engineers not expert in professional
programming languages but can manage with MATLAB for their day to day use.
4. VALIDATION OF PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE
Before accepting any newly developed software one important stage is its testing. In order to
check performance of any software and declare it as reliable one, the results obtained by it need to
be verified against some standard or widely used expert software. The same thing is also true for
Grounding System Analyzer (GSA) software developed herein. For the purpose of checking the
validity of the results given by GSA, one sample problem is solved by GSA and Ground Grid
Systems module of ETAP. Results obtained by both the software are compared. Following graphs
show the corresponding results. Interested readers are referred to [2] for data of the problem.
4.1 Results and Analysis

Fig. 3: Results obtained from GSA and GGS module of ETAP for sample problem

As seen from above graphs the software developed here is giving results quite similar to those
obtained from GGS module of ETAP. Also it applies FE analysis method for rigorous analysis of
grounding system performance. Wherein IEEE 80 only gives numerical analysis of grounding
system design considering worst case condition, this method gives point to point voltages at
various locations on the earth surface at substation site. This method of analysis is more reliable
compared to simple numerical analysis and the same has been successfully implemented here in
the form of software.
5. CONCLUSION
This paper describes development of software named Grounding System Analyzer that can be
used for design of substation grounding systems. Here standalone application has been deployed
using MATLAB as programming platform as well as numerical computational tool. With the help of
MATLAB runtime compiler addon it has been packed and deployed as independent standalone
software. Special data transfer mechanism designed here ensures the application to be a purely
standalone one. Performance of the software is tested by comparison with Ground Grid Systems
module of ETAP. A sample problem has been solved by both the software and comparison of
results validates performance of newly developed software GSA. With further development going
on it is proposed to be professional software in the field of grounding system design
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