Single phase-to-ground short circuit is one of the common faults in electric power system

and the distribution of short circuit current is very important for the evaluation of the safety of grounding system. Because of the complexity of the grounding fault tests

the measured data from tests are rare and valuable

and the detailed distribution of short circuit current in converter station has not been investigated currently. Based on the AC artificial grounding fault test at Funing 500 kV converter station

we experimentally investigated the short circuit current distribution of 500 k V converter station for the first time. After analyzing and simulating the flow direction and value of short circuit current

we proposed a measurement scheme. Measured currents of the grounding device

ground wires of the transmission lines and transformer’s neutral-point are provided and compared with PSCAD simulation results together with proper analyzation. Results show that about 40% of the short circuit current is discharged from the earth of the fault tower

about 60% discharged from the ground wires of the fault line

among which about 20% of the short current is discharged from the ground wires close to the opposite converter station

about 30% of the short current is discharged from the grounding grid of the converter station. Meanwhile

currents which flow through the ground wires of the non-fault lines and transformer’s neutral-point are both less than 7%

which means that when the fault takes place at AC part

it is not necessary to measure the shunt current from the DC ground wires and the transformers neutral-point.