LCnetgen Example 3, Power Line E-field

This example models the situation where an E-field receiver is operating near to a 50Hz overhead power line, as in the adjacent photo. The top wire carries 240V, the middle wire is neutral and the lower wire is earth.

The model sets up a moveable E-field probe consisting of a single sphere at 3m height above ground. This height is chosen because it is close to the effective height of the actual E-field receiver.

Input file

A file pwrline.in contains

   
   line_len = 118       ; Total length of line
   line_height = 6      ; Height of top wire above ground
   line_space = 0.2     ; Vertical spacing of the three wires
   probe_dist = 60      ; Distance of E-field probe from power line
   probe_height = 3.0   ; Height of probe sphere
   
   electrode {
      
      name live_wire
   
      wire {
         end1 -line_len/2, 0, line_height
         end2  line_len/2, 0, line_height
         wirad 5mm
         tiles 500
      }
   }
   
   electrode {
      
      name neutral_wire
   
      wire {
         end1 -line_len/2, 0, line_height - line_space
         end2  line_len/2, 0, line_height - line_space
         wirad 5mm
         tiles 500
      }
   }
   
   electrode {
      
      name earth_wire
   
      wire {
         end1 -line_len/2, 0, line_height - 2 * line_space
         end2  line_len/2, 0, line_height - 2 * line_space
         wirad 5mm
         tiles 500
      }
   }
   
   electrode {
   
      name probe
   
      sphere {
         center 0, probe_dist, probe_height
         radius 0.2
      }
   }
   
   ground {
   
      center 0, 0, 0
      axis 0, 0
   }
   
A Spice sub-circuit is generated with
   lcng -o spice pwrline

Test Circuit

A test circuit puts 240VAC on the live wire and then measures the potential of the probe sphere at 50Hz. pwrline-test.spice contains

   Powerline
   .OPTIONS NOMOD NOPAGE
   .AC LIN 1 50 50
   .PRINT AC V(1)
   
   .INCLUDE pwrline.spice
   
   * 240 volt AC on live wire
   Vin 0 200 DC 0 AC 240.0
   
   X1 0 1 0 0 200 pwrline
   RB 0 1 100G
   .END
This is run with the command
   ngspice -b pwrline-test.spice > pwrline-test.out
A simple shell script is easily employed to repeatedly run lcng and ngspice with a range of probe distances up to 150m. The results are plotted in the graph below.

This example models a real receiver case. The antenna has an effective height of about 3m and is located 65m from the power line. The 50Hz signal at the antenna terminal is around 140mV RMS. Some of this is coming from more distant power lines.