Impedance-Based Fault Location Method for Four-Wire Power Distribution Networks

Fault location techniques play an essential role in system recovery and repair. Therefore, numerous methods have been presented for fault location in power transmission and distribution networks. The contribution of this paper is to extend the state-of-art impedance-based fault location methods to support four-wire power distribution. To make this possible an algorithm is developed. The method is obtained using the principles of circuit theory and overcomes the challenges which prevent the use of most fault location methods for distribution networks in practice. This paper presents the detailed equations which are used in the algorithm and how they are obtained. The satisfactory performance of the algorithm is confirmed with numerical examples using MATLAB software.