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Single wire earth return (SWER) or single wire ground return is a single-wire transmission line for supplying single-phase electrical power from an electrical grid to remote areas at low cost. Its distinguishing feature is that the earth (or sometimes a body of water) is used as the return path for the current, to avoid the need for a second wire (or neutral wire) to act as a return path. It is principally used for rural electrification, but also finds use for larger isolated loads such as water pumps, and light rail. Single wire earth return is also used for HVDC over submarine power cables.

Description

SWER is a good choice for a distribution system when conventional return current wiring would cost more than SWER’s isolation transformers and small power losses. Power engineers experienced with both SWER and conventional power lines rate SWER as equally safe, more reliable, less costly, but with slightly lower efficiency than conventional lines.^[1]

Power is supplied to the SWER line by an isolating transformer of up to 300kVA. This transformer isolates the grid from ground or earth, and changes the grid voltage (typically 22 or 33 kilovolts line to line) to the SWER voltage (typically 12.7 or 19.1 kilovolts line to earth).

The SWER line is a single conductor that may stretch for tens or even hundreds of kilometres, with a number of distribution transformers along its length. At each transformer, such as a customer's premises, current flows from the line, through the primary coil of a step-down isolation transformer, to earth through an earth stake. From the earth stake, the current eventually finds its way back to the main step-down transformer at the head of the line, completing the circuit.^[1] SWER is therefore a practical example of a phantom loop.

In areas with high-resistance soil, the resistance of the soil wastes energy. The wasted energy turns into heat at the grounding rod,^{[dubious – discuss]} and can burn up the rod. Another issue is that the resistance may be high enough that insufficient current flows into the earth neutral, causing the grounding rod to float to higher voltages. Self-resetting circuit breakers usually reset because of a difference in voltage between line and neutral. Therefore, with dry, high-resistance soils, the reduced difference in voltage between line and neutral may prevent breakers from resetting. In Australia, locations with very dry soils need the grounding rods to be extra deep.^[2] Experience in Alaska shows that SWER needs to be grounded below permafrost, which is high-resistance.^[3]

The secondary winding of the local transformer will supply the customer with either single ended single phase (N-0) or split phase (N-0-N) power in the region’s standard appliance voltages, with the 0 volt line connected to a safety earth that does not normally carry an operating current.

A large SWER line may feed as many as 80 distribution transformers. The transformers are usually rated at 5 kVA, 10 kVA and 25 kVA. The load densities are usually below 0.5 kVA per kilometer (0.8 kVA per mile) of line. Any single customer’s maximum demand will typically be less than 3.5 kVA, but larger loads up to the capacity of the distribution transformer can also be supplied.

Some SWER systems in the USA are conventional distribution feeders that were built without a continuous neutral (some of which were obsoleted transmission lines that were refitted for rural distribution service). The substation feeding such lines has a grounding rod on each pole within the substation; then on each branch from the line, the span between the pole next to and the pole carrying the transformer would have a grounded conductor (giving each transformer two grounding points for safety reasons).

Mechanical Design

The mechanical design of a SWER line can lower its lifetime cost and increase its safety.

Since the line is high voltage, with small currents, the conductor used in historic SWER lines was No. 8 galvanized steel fence wire. More modern installations use specially-designed AS1222.1 ^[4][5] high-carbon steel, aluminum-clad wires. Aluminum clad wires corrode in coastal areas, but are otherwise more suitable. ^[6] Because of the long spans and high mechanical tensions, vibration from wind can cause damage to the wires. Modern systems install spiral vibration dampers on the wires.^[6]

Insulators are often porcelain because polymers are prone to damage from ultraviolet. Some utilities install higher-voltage insulators so the line can be easily upgraded to carry more power. For example 12kV lines may be insulated to 22kV, or 19kV lines to 33kV.^[6]

Reinforced concrete poles have been traditionally used in SWER lines because of their low cost, low maintenance, and resistance to water damage, termites and fungi. Local labor can produce them in most areas, further lowering costs. In New Zealand, metal poles are common (often being former rails from a railway line). Wooden poles are acceptable. In Mozambique, poles had to be 12M to permit safe passage of giraffes.^[6] If an area is prone to lightning, modern designs place lightning ground straps in the poles when the poles are constructed, before erection. The straps and wiring can be arranged to be a low-cost lightning arrestor with rounded edges to avoid attracting a lightning strike.^[6]

History

Lloyd Mandeno OBE (1888-1973) fully developed SWER in New Zealand around 1925 for rural electrification. Although he termed it “Earth Working Single Wire Line” it was often called “Mandeno’s Clothesline”.^[7] More than 200,000 kilometres have now been installed in Australia and New Zealand. It is considered safe, reliable and low cost, provided that safety features and earthing are correctly installed. The Australian standards are widely used and cited. It has been applied in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Brazil, Africa, portions of the United States' Upper Midwest, and SWER interties have been proposed for Alaska and prototyped.

Characteristics

Safety

SWER's safety is assured because transformers isolate the ground from both the generator and user. Most electrical systems use a metallic neutral connected directly to the generator or a shared ground. Certain groups claim that stray voltages from SWER can injure livestock.^[1]

Grounding is critical. Significant currents on the order of 8 amperes flow through the ground near the earth points. A good-quality earth connection is needed to prevent risk of electric shock due to earth potential rise near this point. Separate grounds for power and safety are also used. Duplication of the ground points assures that the system is still safe if either of the grounds is damaged.

A good earth connection is normally a 6 m stake of copper-clad steel driven vertically into the ground, and bonded to the transformer earth and tank. A good ground resistance is 5–10 ohms. SWER systems are designed to limit the voltage in the earth to 20 volts per meter to avoid shocking people and animals that might be in the area.

Other standard features include automatic reclosing circuit breakers (reclosers). Most faults (overcurrent) are transient. Since the network is rural, most of these faults will be cleared by the recloser. Each service site needs a rewirable drop out fuse for protection and switching of the transformer. The transformer secondary should also be protected by a standard high-rupture capacity (HRC) fuse or low voltage circuit breaker. A surge arrestor (spark gap) on the high voltage side is common, especially in lightning-prone areas.

The official investigation into the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Australia, disclosed that a broken SWER conductor that comes in contact with a return path entry point with resistance similar to the circuit's normal load (such as a tree) can cause large amounts of current to flow to ground without a fault indication.^[8] This presents a danger in fire-prone areas where a conductor may snap and current may arc through trees or dry grass.

Bare-wire or ground-return telecommunications can be compromised by the ground-return current if the grounding area is closer than 100 m or sinks more than 10 A of current. Modern radio, optic fibre channels and cell phone systems are unaffected.

Cost advantage

SWER’s main advantage is its low cost. It is often used in sparsely populated areas where the cost of building an isolated distribution line cannot be justified. Capital costs are roughly 50% of an equivalent two-wire single-phase line. They can cost 70% less than 3-wire three-phase systems. Maintenance costs are roughly 50% of an equivalent line.

SWER also reduces the largest cost of a distribution network, the number of poles. Conventional 2-wire or 3-wire distribution lines have a higher power transfer capacity, but can require seven poles per kilometre, with spans of 100 to 150 metres. SWER’s high line voltage and low current also permits the use of low-cost galvanized steel wire (historically, No. 8 fence wire).^[6] Steel’s greater strength permits spans of 400 metres or more, reducing the number of poles to 2.5 per kilometre.

If the poles also carry optical fiber cable for telecommunications (metal conductors may not be used), capital expenditures by the power company may be further reduced.

Reliability strengths

SWER can be used in a grid or loop, but is usually arranged in a linear or radial layout to save costs. In the customary linear form, a single-point failure in a SWER line causes all customers further down the line to lose power. However, since it has fewer components in the field, SWER has less to fail. For example, since there is only one line, winds can’t cause lines to clash, removing a source of damage, as well as a source of rural brush fires.

Since the bulk of the transmission line has low resistance attachments to earth, excessive ground currents from shorts and geomagnetic storms are more rare than in conventional metallic-return systems. So, SWER has fewer ground-fault circuit-breaker openings to interrupt service.^[1]

Power quality weakness

SWER lines tend to be long, with high impedance, so the voltage drop along the line is often a problem, causing poor regulation. Variations in demand cause variation in the delivered voltage. To combat this, some installations have automatic variable transformers at the customer site to keep the received voltage within legal specifications.^[9]

SWER combined with distributed generation is substantially more efficient than a single-ended system. For example, some rural installations can offset line losses and charging currents with local solar power, wind power, small hydro or other local generation. This can be an excellent value for the electrical distributor, because it reduces the need for more lines.

After some years of experience, the inventor advocated a capacitor in series with the ground of the main isolation transformer to counteract the inductive reactance of the transformers, wire and earth return path. The plan was to improve the power factor, reduce losses and improve voltage performance due to reactive power flow.^[1] Though theoretically sound, this is not standard practice.

Networks and circuits

As demand grows, a well-designed SWER line can be substantially upgraded without new poles.^[10] The first step may be to replace the steel wire with more expensive copper-clad or aluminum-clad steel wire.

It may be possible to increase the voltage. Some distant SWER lines now operate at voltages as high as 35 kV. Normally this requires changing the insulators and transformers, but no new poles are needed.^[11]

If more capacity is needed, a second SWER line can be run on the same poles to provide two SWER lines 180 degrees out of phase. This requires more insulators and wire, but doubles the power without doubling the poles. Many standard SWER poles have several bolt holes to support this upgrade. This configuration causes most ground currents to cancel, reducing shock hazards and interference with communication lines.

Two phase service is also possible with a two-wire upgrade: Though less reliable, it is more efficient. As more power is needed, the lines can be upgraded to match the load, from single wire SWER to two wire, single phase and finally to three wire, three phase. This ensures a more efficient use of capital and makes the initial installation more affordable.

Customer equipment installed before these upgrades will all be single phase, and can be reused after the upgrade. If small amounts of three-phase power are needed, it can be economically synthesized from two-phase power with on-site equipment.

Regulatory issues

Many national electrical regulations (notably the U.S.) require a metallic return line from the load to the generator.^[12] In these jurisdictions, each SWER line must be approved by exception.

Rural electrification in Alaska

In 1981 a high-power 8.5 mile prototype SWER line was successfully installed from a Diesel plant in Bethel to Napakiak in Alaska, United States. It operates at 80 kV, and has special lightweight fiberglass poles forming an A-frame(the A frames have been removed and standard wood power poles installed). The poles can be carried on lightweight snow machines, and most poles can be installed with hand tools on permafrost without extensive digging. Erection of “anchoring” poles still required heavy machinery, but the cost savings were dramatic.

Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, United States estimate that a network of such lines, combined with coastal wind turbines, could substantially reduce rural Alaska’s dependence on increasingly expensive diesel fuel for power generation.^[13] Alaska’s state economic energy screening survey advocated further study of this option to use more of the state’s underutilized power sources.^[14]

Use by developing nations

At present, certain developing nations have adopted SWER systems as their mains electricity systems, notably Laos, South Africa and Mozambique.^[6] SWER is also used extensively in Brazil where it is termed “Redes Monofilares com Retorno por Terra” or “MRT”. There are detailed standards and drawings available in Brazilian Portuguese that would be transferable to other Portuguese speaking countries such as Angola and Mozambique.^[15]

Use for HVDC systems

Many high-voltage direct current systems using submarine power cables are single wire earth return systems. Bipolar systems with both positive and negative cables may also retain a seawater grounding electrode, used when one pole has failed. To avoid electrochemical corrosion, the ground electrodes of such systems are situated apart from the converter stations and not near the transmission cable.

The electrodes can be situated in the sea or on land. Bare copper wires can be used for cathodes, and graphite rods buried in the ground, or titanium grids in the sea are used for anodes. To avoid electrochemical corrosion (and passivation of titanium surfaces) the current density at the surface of the electrodes must be small, and therefore large electrodes are required.

The advantage of such schemes is eliminating the cost of a second conductor, since salt water is an excellent conductor. Some ecologists^[who?] claim that electrochemical reactions caused by the earth return can affect wildlife. However, these reactions do not occur on very large underwater electrodes^{[citation needed]}.

Examples of HVDC systems with single wire earth return

• Baltic Cable
• Kontek
• Basslink

References

External articles and links

Websites

• Rural power.org; Excellent site on this topic. Provides the PDF of Mandeno's article.
• Manual for Single Wire Earth Return Power Systems From the Network Power Standards Branch of the Australian Northern Territory Government. Includes dimensioned mechanical drawings and parts lists.
• AS2558-2006, Transformers for use on Single Wire Earth-Return Distribution Systems- An Australian standard
• Saskatchewan in Canada has operated SWER for more than fifty years
• Distributed generation as voltage support for single wire earth return systems, Kashem, M.A.; Ledwich, G.; IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Volume 19, Issue 3, July 2004 Page(s): 1002 - 1011 [2]