Performance Analysis and Optimization Designs for HVDC Grounding Electrodes

High voltage direct current(HVDC) grounding electrodes can provide a current-leakage channel for ground faults, ensuring HVDC systems’ safety and reliability. The HVDC grounding electrodes with better designs can quickly discharge more current and have better grounding performance, which is important for improving DC transmission capacity. Existing HVDC grounding electrodes mainly adopt simple ring or vertical deep-well ground electrode designs. These simple designs rely on experience and lack theoretical guidance for complicated cases, which may cause potential electrical accidents or a waste of grounding materials in practical engineering. To solve the above problems, this paper studies the grounding performance and optimization designs for HVDC grounding electrodes in detail. The grounding parameters of HVDC grounding electrodes are calculated, the grounding performance and design of several typical types of HVDC grounding electrodes are analyzed, and finally, the optimized design for different HVDC grounding electrodes is proposed. The contribution of this paper is to provide guidance for the design of HVDC grounding electrodes and achieve better grounding performance for DC transmission systems, which helps increase the transmission capacity and reliability.