Analysis of lightning protection with transmission line arrester using ATP/EMTP: Case of an HV 220kV double circuit line

Over the last few decades, the electric utilities have seen a very significant increase in the application of metal oxide surge arresters on transmission lines in an effort to reduce lightning initiated flashovers, maintain high power quality and to avoid damages and disturbances especially in areas with high soil resistivity and lightning ground flash density. For economical insulation coordination in transmission and substation equipment, it is necessary to predict accurately the lightning surge overvoltages that occur on an electric power system. The main objective is to study and evaluate the HV transmission line protection with metal oxide surge arresters when a lightning strike hits the ground wire. In this work, the contribution of surge arresters in the lightning protection of an operational 220 kV double circuit shielded overhead transmission line using the ATP/EMTP program is studied. All the used models are extensively verified through a comparison of published simulated and experimental results. Practical recommendations based on the simulations are made for an improvement of the lightning performance of the transmission line. Also, in this work, we investigate the suitability of multiple solutions corresponding to different arrester locations. Throughout, a dynamic arrester model is used.