AbstractThis paper presents the fundamental surge phenomenon when a step voltage is applied to a horizontal line above the ground which has branch feeders. We study line current and voltage at joint with the method of moments that calculates electromagnetic field in frequency domain. It is widely noted that the current reflection factor changes to a third at the junction of the same three lines in conventional transmission line theory based on TEM wave, and the stepwise current reflected appears overlapping to the incident current. On the other hand, the reflected current from the joint shows the inductive characteristic or the capacitive one depending on the angle between lines, which varies gradually and not stepwise in our numerical analysis considering TM wave. The time characteristic of the voltage at joint depends on the angles also, and the peak voltage slightly exceeds the voltage by the transmission line theory. These phenomena are caused by the electromagnetic coupling between the main line and branch lines. In addition to the computer simulations, we measured the currents in the reduced‐scale model lines and the results show the validity of our analysis regarding changes of the reflected current depending on the angles. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 144(2): 1–8, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.10176