Development of fault characterization equipment (FCAREC) for power transmission lines

The authors present fault characterization equipment (FCAREC) which detects fault resistances in a time sequence, in addition to the conventional determination of fault location. The objective of FCAREC is to offer improved functions to estimate causes of system faults. The equipment works by solving a circuit equation, using voltage and current data and line constants at each end of a particular line. To reduce the effects of data measurement errors, a high-precision calculation based on the least squares method is used. Since December 1989, the prototype FCAREC equipment has been used in feasibility tests on 154 kV parallel double transmission lines. During the tests, three power system faults were experienced and satisfactory results were obtained in all cases.<
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