Travelling wave fault location based on pattern recognition

Travelling Wave Fault Locators (TWFL) allow a higher precision in most cases than typical impedance based fault location methods. One of the major problems with it, is the measurement of the arrival times of Travelling Waves (TWs). In this paper, a new method to compute the difference of arrival times of the first wavefront is presented. The method is based on the telegrapher's equations. The paper illustrates the algorithm approach, tested on simulation models. In addition, practical experience on the Belgian transmission network is discussed. The different sources of error of the algorithm and the practical difficulties to apply it are discussed in the paper.