Earthing and equipotential bonding are fundamental safety measures to protect humans from the effects of short circuits to earth and earth faults. They are also important elements of a lightning protection system. The earthing system of any electrical supply system needs to be designed to ensure personnel safety while at the same time maintaining high system availability.

PTI Consulting develops and verifies concepts for earthing and equipotential bonding systems for industrial, railway or power utility systems. This is particularly relevant for new system installations, system modifications such as extension or replacement of equipment or changes to the connected electricity supply system. We also design and check lightning protection systems and provide fast support in case of related disturbances and faults.

In case of a ground fault, the method of neutral treatment is of crucial importance to ensure the safe and reliable operation of a power supply system. The suitable selection for the neutral grounding of an individual network strongly depends on its size and structure, shares of cables and overhead lines, and also on power quality requirements.

PTI Consulting offers studies to develop or review neutral grounding concepts. We assist in comparing the technical and economic impact of different types of neutral grounding, evaluate and optimize existing grounding systems, offer vendor-neutral selection and sizing of suitable equipment and network conversion actions.

Electromagnetic fields from energized conductors, cables or metallic pipelines can be a risk for people working on the equipment, disturb or damage surrounding equipment if they exceed certain limits. They can also produce overvoltages on secondary equipment, for example during switching of circuit breakers or disconnectors, which can lead to damaged equipment.

PTI consulting assists you in ensuring the safety of your service personnel and protecting your equipment. We analyze the compliance with recommended limiting values of electric and magnetic fields and calculate the inductive interference between high-voltage overhead lines and secondary equipment or pipelines. To enhance the safety of all people who can get in touch with those metallic structures, we calculate or measure the touch voltages caused by interference.

No matter how well designed a power system is, faults may occur during operation or maintenance work on or near live equipment. There is a high risk for severe injury or even death for employees exposed to arc flashes resulting from such faults. For new plants and substations, if restructuring, changing switching configurations, or replacing equipment, an arc flash study should be performed.

PTI Consulting delivers arc flash hazard calculations, recommendations for proper PPE, risk mitigation and warning labels according to the latest international standards.