Determining Impact of Lightning Strike Location on Failures in Transmission Network Elements Using Fuzzy Decision-Making

This paper presents a new approach for determining the impact of lightning strike currents on transmission network elements failures, based on fuzzy logic (FL) and expert systems. The location of lightning strike is determined by means of lightning location system (LLS) and failures in the transmission network, sorted by type of the equipment, are obtained from supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. The input data set includes two sets. The first set consists of lightning strike locations and current values between the cloud and the ground. The second set consists of current values from SCADA system before and after the fault, protection tripping information, and the state and position of the switches. The proposed FL-based solution is based on a fuzzy decision-making system (DMS), including both data sets in order to provide a power system operator (PSO) with a precise and accurate decision needed in time of emergency. The described model has been tested for functionality and correct results have been obtained, which confirms the membership function (MF) assessment and proves the efficiency and authenticity of the proposed DMS.