Development of a fault locating system using object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming has received wide acceptance in power system applications. The main advantages achieved by using the object-oriented techniques include easy maintenance, enhanced expandability and inherent implementation flexibility. This paper presents recent software developments of a fault location system implemented using object-oriented approaches and C++ programming language. The proposed new algorithms, implementation techniques, and evaluation studies are addressed. The developed system aims at pinpointing faults on transmission systems by utilizing recorded data coming from digital fault recorders (DFRs) sparsely located at various substations. The concept of "waveform matching" is implemented by taking advantage of the power system model. The mathematical formulation of the problem is presented. A unique genetic algorithm based search engine for pinpointing the most probable fault location is proposed. The suitability of applying the object-oriented programming for fault location software developments is demonstrated.