Practical Methodology for Two-Terminal Traveling Wave-Based Fault Location Eliminating the Need for Line Parameters and Time Synchronization

Abstract

This paper presents a practical methodology for traveling wave (TW)-based fault location on homogeneous transmission lines. It provides improvements in the fault location accuracy in real-world scenarios by eliminating the influence of uncertainties in line parameters and data time synchronization errors, which are potentialities not readily available in actual micro-processed fault location devices. A commercially available software for TW analysis is proposed to be used as a support tool to compute auxiliary variables, from which the accurate fault distance is estimated. Real and simulated TW fault records are assessed, from which the proposed fault location procedure is evaluated, highlighting its step by step. The obtained results show that the proposed methodology is straightforward and reliable, being quite useful for field applications.