A Wideband Single End Fault Location Scheme for Active Untransposed Distribution Systems

Abstract

This paper presents a single end fault location scheme for distribution networks with distributed generation (DG). The high frequency transients generated when a fault occurs are used to locate the fault point. An equivalent circuit at high frequencies is derived for both inverter based and synchronous DGs. The voltages and currents measured only at the main substation are used in conjunction with the proposed DG model to create the fault location scheme. The distributed parameter line model is employed in the derivation to account for the line characteristics, e.g., inductive and capacitive mutual coupling and untransposed lines. The inverter based DG model is validated experimentally on a 400 V, three-phase system. The IEEE 34-bus feeder is simulated and used to evaluate the proposed scheme for different operating conditions, e.g., fault resistance and DG conditions. The extensive simulation studies show the accuracy of the proposed scheme with 95.3% of the test cases having an absolute error in estimation of less than 200 m.