The arcing fault based multi-cycle incipient fault detection for underground cable

This paper proposes a novel method for detecting a multi-cycle incipient fault in an underground cable. The incipient faults are recognized as self-clearing arcing faults and detection method is performed by calculating fault point voltage total harmonic distortion (THD) for all possible distances in the cable. The arc fault is detected when the fault point voltage THD at any assumed fault distance is larger than the threshold. The proposed arcing fault detection method eliminates the effect of fault distance. The proposed incipient fault detection has been verified by PSCAD/EMTDC simulations. Results show that the proposed method is effective and accurate. Lab experiments are also conducted to further validate the proposed detection method.