A Symmetrical Component Evaluation for Broken Conductor Fault Detection

The Broken Conductor (BC) scenario is a particular case of High Impedance Fault (HIF) in the electrical grid. It is caused when a fault breaks up the line cable and remains hanging at the pole. This situation brings problems with traditional protection systems, which act in response to an overcurrent or under-voltage. The similarities of this type of fault with natural electrical characteristics, such as load variation, capacitor switching, and mains maneuvers, make it difficult to detect this type of issue. To evaluate a BC failure analysis, this study offers a symmetric current methodology considering a relationship between the negative sequence and zero with the positive sequence during a BC event. The simulations are made with ATP-EMTP considering the artificial situation, and a real oscillography are evaluated in Python language.