Accurate Two-Terminal Transmission Line Fault Location Using Traveling Waves

TLDR

The study introduces a novel two‑terminal traveling‑wave fault‑location method. The method relies solely on the time difference between the first incident traveling wave and its reflection at both line ends, eliminating the need for data synchronization or line‑parameter knowledge. Simulation on a 500 kV line demonstrates that the formulation accurately locates faults even when data synchronism errors and line‑parameter uncertainties are present.

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative two-terminal traveling wave (TW)-based fault location formulation. It depends only on the time difference between the first incident TW and the successive reflection from the fault point, at both line ends. Thereby, the proposed formulation requires neither data synchronization nor line parameters, which are sources of error that usually affect TW-based fault location schemes. Several faults on a typical 500 kV line were simulated to compare the proposed formulation performance with that of a classical two-end approach. The obtained results attest that the proposed formulation is able to accurately locate faults on transmission lines, even when data synchronism errors and uncertainties in the monitored line parameters exist.