A Searching Based Method for Locating High Impedance Arcing Fault in Distribution Networks

Locating high impedance fault (HIF) in a distribution network enhances the reliability of the system and improves the quality of the service for the customers. Due to low magnitudes of fault current and nonlinearity of fault impedance it is a very hard task and less considered by the distribution automation system. This paper introduces a novel method for estimating the location of high impedance arcing faults in radial distribution systems. The proposed method searches the feeders of the network at different locations, to find where the estimated parameters of the assumed HIF would result the most accurate estimation of the faulty phase voltage. The fault current and the arc parameters are estimated at each probable location employing an appropriate model to estimate the faulty phase voltage. As the proposed method uses the time domain analysis, it is applicable for nonhomogeneous distribution networks with unbalanced loading as well as symmetrical systems. The results of simulations of IEEE 34-node test feeder with various HIF parameters by EMTP-RV show that the proposed method is well capable of locating high impedance faults despite uncertainty in the load data.