An analytical fault location method based on minimum number of installed PMUs

Abstract

SUMMARYIn this paper, a new method is proposed for fault location using minimum number of phasor measurement units (PMUs) in a power network. In this method, all possible fault points over transmission lines are represented as virtual buses, and corresponding bus impedance matrices are calculated. Because capacitive property at the virtual buses is neglected, resulting impedance matrices are linear with respect to fault point distance. Using voltage data provided by PMUs and applying superposition theorem, potential fault points on every single transmission line are extracted, each by solving linear equations, and then, exact fault location is obtained using two predefined rules. In addition, fault type and fault impedance are determined by some criteria involving symmetrical components. Merits of the proposed method include simplified equations, thanks to linearity provided by omitting capacitive effect, as well as minimum required PMUs to be installed in the network. Besides, a set of fundamental rules describing PMU placement constraints, according to required voltage data of different points in the network, are introduced. Employing these rules ends up to a fewer number of required PMUs in comparison with other proposed methods. At the end of this paper, the accuracy of the suggested method has been evaluated by applying it on three test systems, namely Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 30-bus, IEEE 39-bus, and IEEE 118-bus. Simulations, performed by MATLAB Simulink (MathWorks, Natick, MA, USA), indicate high accuracy and consistent results of the proposed method.

Wide area impedance‐based fault location using synchronized/unsynchronized current measurements

“…These methods are classified into two groups: Traveling wave based [24][25][26][27][28] and impedance based. [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] Traveling wave based methods require high sampling rates for measurements whereas impedance-based methods need much lower rates. 38 A comparison between traditional and wide area fault location methods can be found in Table 1.…”

“…Phasor measurement units (PMUs) as the most important part of these systems play a key role in recording and transmitting data across the grid for different purposes including fault location which impedance-based wide area fault location methods rely on GPS-synchronized measurements obtained by these units. 29,39 An important issue about synchronized measurement devices is the GPS signal reliability. There are disparate factors like atmospheric disturbances, GPS antenna failure, electromagnetic interference, weather change, GPS signal attack, or solar activity which are uncontrollable and unpredictable and may cause GPS receivers lose signal occasionally.…”

Wide‐area fault location method considering gross measurement errors

“…To evaluate the effect of PMU channels limitation on the PMU placement scheme, based on [39], (25) is modified as…”

“…In [24], an optimal meter placement scheme based on integer LP manner is presented. In [25], using the during-fault impedance matrices, neglecting shunt capacitance at the fault point and utilising the bus voltages and employing the superposition theorem, the location of the fault is obtained.…”

Accurate fault location and faulted section determination based on deep learning for a parallel‐compensated three‐terminal transmission line

“…A precise and robust fault location method is essential for line outage time reduction in fault occurrence conditions. Previous works on fault location are based on line signal phasors [1][2][3][4][5][6], fault transients [7][8][9][10][11][12][13] or features of fault signals manipulated by intelligent frameworks [14][15][16][17][18][19]. Phasor-based algorithms utilise line equations at the fundamental power frequency to solve for fault location.…”