Early Fault Indicator Through Continuous Surveillance of Transient Phenomena in Power Grid Systems

With the ageing of power grids, underground transmission and distribution systems are increasingly prone to damage; therefore, it is imperative to provide possible solutions for early fault detection in order to avoid undesirable effects such as power outages and increased maintenance costs. This paper presents a real case study whereby the implementation of a continuous monitoring system provided an early detection of a fault that occurred in an underground segment. The fault occurred on a segment that lacks monitoring and is tangent to another power segment continuously under the surveillance of our system. The use of advanced processing techniques based on phase diagram analysis allows us to accurately detect and locate the position of fault in the power cable.