Anti-theft grounding system for industrial application

Abstract

Grounding systems for industrial applications are prone to theft. This is true for telecommunication receiving, transverse and repeater towers. They are erected along highways, urban areas and residential areas to provide more coverage to users and customers. Material which is popularly used for grounding system is copper. Copper conductor has been widely used in grounding system due to its high conductivity and good resistance to underground corrosion. However, copper is a very expensive material and its recycled value is also attractive. This resulted in high cost of grounding system. For the pasts few years telecommunication utilities’ grounding system copper material are subjected to theft when installed as grounding conductor. In order to prevent the grounding system from being stolen and to reduce the cost of grounding system, this study proposed the use of galvanized steel conductor to replace copper conductor in grounding system. Galvanized steel conductor does not suffer from theft issue faced by copper conductor. Since the conductivity of galvanized steel is not as good as copper, backfills consisting of peat soil and oil palm ash are added as parts of the grounding system to improve the overall conductivity of the proposed grounding system resistance value. However to cater for high current transfer capability of the galvanized steel diameter can be increased. The anti-theft grounding system which basically use galvanized steel with soil enhancement by means of using peat soil and oil palm ashes was proven to be capable of providing reasonably low resistance value of grounding system (better than copper grounding) for monitored period of 10 months while reducing the cost of the system and preventing theft.