A new fault location technique for two- and three-terminal lines

A method for the computation of fault location in two- and three-terminal high voltage lines is presented. It is based on digital computation of the three-phase current and voltage 60/50 Hz phasors at the line terminals. The method is independent of fault type and insensitive to source impedance variation or fault resistance. Furthermore, it considers the synchronization errors in sampling the current and voltage waveforms at the different line terminals. The method can be used online following the operation of digital relays or offline using data transferred to a central processor from digital transient recording apparatus. The authors start with a two-terminal line to explain the principles and then present the technique for a three-terminal line. The technique was first tested using data obtained from a steady-state fault analysis program to evaluate the convergence, observability, and uniqueness of the solution. The technique was then tested using EMPT-generated transient data. The test results show the high accuracy of the technique.<
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