Voltage Dip Measurements to Locate Faults on High Voltage Reticulation Feeders

High voltage overhead reticulation lines are particularly vulnerable to lightning activity due to the lower basic insulation level (BIL) inherent to their design. Furthermore, in the South African context, these feeders often stretch over hundreds of kilometers and are often built on terrains that are difficult to access. These factors necessitate the use of some form of fault locating device. Some modern relays do have fault locating ability built into them. They do however not cater for lines of a heterogeneous nature. They also require inputs from voltage transformers, which make them expensive to operate under certain conditions. This project is aimed to develop a Microsoft-based software programme to locate intermittent faults on high-voltage radial overhead reticulation feeders.