A new fault location method for electric power grids

Abstract

Fault location in electric power grids has traditionally been achieved by measuring rms short-circuit current magnitudes on both ends of a faulted line, and then comparing simulations with these measurements. This paper presents a new fault location procedure based upon voltage-only measurements at a few busses in the system. The new procedure utilizes system impedance matrices and a least-squared error minimization technique to estimate the fault location. The estimation algorithm has been successfully tested with five actual faults to verify its validity. Three-phase and phase-to-ground faults are included in the analysis.