A New PMU-Based Fault Location Scheme Considering Current Transformers Saturation

In this paper, a novel PMU-based fault location method considering CTs saturation is presented. The voltage and current phasors at both ends of the line are assumed to be available via PMUs. Between two existing CTs, only one of them will saturate in some fault conditions. Therefore, only the current measured by unsaturated CT will be utilized in fault location process. The proposed scheme determines the fault location by using a new simple optimization scheme. In the proposed scheme an optimization problem is developed by utilizing voltages and currents data from one end and voltages data from other end. In this optimization problem, the location of fault and the fault resistance are defined as decision variables that will calculate simultaneously by solving the optimization problem. Since the optimization problem is a non-linear one, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is utilized for solving it. The presented results using MATLAB/SIMULINK software show the efficiency of the proposed scheme in accurate fault location.