Accurate Fault Location Technique for Active Distribution System using $\mu \text{PMUs}$ Current Data

Increased demand of reliable power supply in the active distribution system requires the information on accurate fault location and faulty section identification in a restoration process following a fault. However, the conventional techniques have limited performance in an unbalance, unsymmetrical network with the penetration of converter based distributed generations (DGs) and due to the nonlinear behaviour of smart controllers in the DS. On the other hand, smart DS initiatives have provided a platform to capture the changes following any event, with micro-phasor measurement units (
$\mu\text{PMU}$
), smart meter (SM). Considering smart meters at all buses and
$\mu-\text{PMU}$
at the junction nodes, this paper proposes a new method to detect the faulty section and fault location using current data only. The proposed method is applied to IEEE 33 bus distribution system and simulation results obtained from MATLAB/SIMULINK reveals, the percentage error in locating the fault is within acceptable limits even with variation in fault resistance and presence of DGs. The computational burden of this method remains unchanged even with increase of the network size and complexity. This scheme is not affected by the type of loading: balanced, unbalanced and non-linear controllers.