indicated from the voltage and current traces at the discharged times that swung to the opposite polarity. In this paper, for the purpose of better understanding the swinging of these traces to the opposite polarity and determining the factors affecting it, simulation work was carried out. All of these clear observations that the inductive effect can be significant in a ground electrode under a high-impulse current, which are indicated from the delay in the current rise time and voltage and the swinging of the current traces to negative, lead to the judgement that other approaches for achieving a good performance of grounding systems under high-impulse currents need to be considered. Having stated all of these reasons, there is a need to consider another parameter, soil resistivity, for which the method to achieve low soil resistivity is the use of EMs. Various types of EMs are available commercially, where the data of their performances are usually presented as the power frequency performance [9; 10; 11; 12; 13; 14; 15]. Different EMs are expected to have different performances, as demonstrated in [9; 10; 11; 12; 13; 14; 15]. Some studies on various EMs have also been conducted under high-impulse conditions. However, some EMs are not available locally, and the characteristics of the EM used in this study may not necessarily have the same characteristics as those published. The soil resistivity values can be high in some regions, and on rare occasions, conductive minerals such as those found in EMs can be used to greatly reduce the soil resistivity. Many studies have found that the effect of EMs improves significantly in the presence of water [9; 12; 13; 14]. As EMs contain conductive minerals, they would be expected to appreciably reduce the soil conductivity and ground resistance values in the presence of water. However, it was noticed in field measurement research [16; 17] that a low soil-ionisation process is seen in low-resistivity soil, which is indicated as a small percentage of the fall in \(Z_{imp}\) from its steady-state value. In soil, as the permittivity of air is low (-1), the electric field in air voids and interfacial surfaces within the soil is, therefore, enhanced. Due to this, arcing can be initiated from these air voids when subjected to high stress (i.e., voltage magnitudes, soil conductivity). The electrons can be from the air voids of high electric fields and can be liberated from the electrode, where the number of electrons can increase due to collisions and also from the adequate energy gained from the ionisation process. The electrons in the avalanche move very fast compared to the positive ions. Hence, the positive ions remain virtually in their original positions and the head of the avalanche will be filled with fast-moving electrons. This leads to streamer propagation from the electrode or these air voids that are ionised, which can lead to streamers proceeding across the soil, forming a conducting path of a highly ionised region or a full breakdown in the soil. When soil of low resistivity is subjected to a high voltage, the electrons released due to the soil ionisation process or from the electrodes may not be effective, as these electrons diffuse due to the low soil resistivity, which produces a rather constant rate of conduction in the soil mass when the voltage penetrates the air gap in the soil. Studies on increasing the water content in soil under high-impulse currents, which have mostly tested this using a laboratory approach, have also shown similar characteristics [18; 19], where the water content had little influence on the breakdown voltage or the critical electric field, although in [19], the soil characteristics were found to be significant for soil mixed with a water content of less than 4%. As the effectiveness of EMs is dependent on the presence of water, as seen in [12; 13; 14; 15], for a low voltage and a low current, the number of studies on the impulse characteristics of EMs with various water contents is limited.