Reducing the Computational Complexity of Wide-Area Backup Protection in Power Systems

Wide-area backup protection (WABP) refers to the identification of the faulted line amongst candidate lines by using sparse PMU measurements. This letter proposes a technique for reducing the computational complexity of WABP methods that employ the superimposed-circuit concept. A proposition is presented and proved to justify that the system of equations pertaining to every candidate line can be directly obtained from the bus impedance matrix of the pre-fault power system. This is in contrast with existing WABP methods requiring the establishment of as many distinct bus impedance matrices as the number of candidate lines in the power system. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed technique are verified by conducting more than 20,000 simulations on the IEEE 39-bus test system.