Distribution System Fault Location Method Using Reclosure-generating Traveling Waves

Fault location in distribution systems includes 2 subtasks: fault distance estimation and fault section identification. This paper presents a fault location method based on reclosure-generating traveling waves and system topology. Firstly, the reclosure-generating traveling waves under normal and fault conditions are analyzed to find the traveling wave reflected by fault point, through which the fault distance could be estimated. Secondly, we propose a fault section identification method by comparing real measured traveling waves with simulated traveling waves with different potential fault points. Noticing that only time information of traveling waves rather than their magnitude is necessary, instead of using electromagnetic transient simulation, we also present a simplified simulation algorithm that only focuses on the arrival time of traveling waves based on priority queue. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can locate fault points in high accuracy with low computational burden.