Measurement and calculation of power frequency electric fields generated by high voltage overhead power lines

Accurate calculation of electric fields produced by overhead power lines has great significance for several research areas. Despite numerous commercial software packages dedicated to estimate the power frequency fields under the overhead transmission lines, this paper deals with the analysis and application of a three-dimensional calculation method. This readily applicable method based on the charge simulation method (CSM) was implemented in MATLAB program for the electric field calculation. The results obtained by the proposed computational method were compared with on-site measurements performed in the vicinity of power transmission lines. In this work, the CSM in two-dimensions and a commercially available software package were also applied in field computations in order to verify the proposed method. Thus, a very satisfactory level of agreement between the measured and computed results through three applications was observed proving the sufficient precision of the simplified calculation method.