A Group of Single-Ended Time-Domain Line Fault Location Methods Using Breaker Operation Information

This paper proposes three single-ended time-domain fault location methods for AC transmission lines. The traditional impedance based single-ended fault location methods usually assume that the system is homogeneous or the remote source parameters are known, which are not always satisfied. In addition, the phasor measurements are required, which need a relatively long measurement time window (typically more than one cycle). The proposed methods utilize the additional information brought by the operation modes of circuit breakers. The proposed methods only require instantaneous voltage and current measurements at the local end, and do not need any remote side information. Specifically, the line models considering lumped or distributed parameters are utilized, formulating three fault location methods. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is verified via numerous case studies in PSCAD/EMTDC, with different fault types, locations and resistances, and the results prove that the method with full consideration of distributed parameters presents the best accuracy. The methods only require a short data window within half a cycle (10 ms) and a relatively low sampling rate of 4kHz.