Fault Location and Monitoring of Open Phase Conditions on 500 kV Transmission Lines with Synchrophasor Measurements

Synchrophasor measurements have generally been utilized to analyze steady states and electromechanical oscillations. However, quite a few research works have proposed algorithms for transmission line fault location via synchrophasors obtained from phasor measurement units (PMUs). Processing real-field PMU data can be seen as the best way to enhance credibility of the simulation results. In this paper, two PMU data sets are taken from two 500 kV transmission lines. Both data arrays contain voltage and current phasors from the opposite line ends that describe prefault, fault and postfault conditions on the line. A number of single-end and double-end fault location expressions are examined simultaneously to show that PMU-based fault location errors can be within 1%. Through careful examination of synchrophasors representing the open-pole operation, a few criteria are proposed and illustrated to reveal whether the fault has disappeared and subsequent line reclosing will likely be successful.