Impact of distributed generation integration in electric power distribution systems on fault location methods

Accurate Fault location in an electric Power Distribution System (EPDS) is important in maintaining system reliability. Several methods have been proposed in the past. However, these methods require a radial power flow systems to be studied. Nowadays diverse technologies for distributed electricity production or generation (DG) such us Wind, PV... are developed. The integration of these self-productions to the conventional networks modifies the classical power transit and changes the fault signals amplitudes. In this paper, a new impedance-based Fault Location (FL) method is presented. It is based on the voltage-sag calculation. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is demonstrated using a radial power flow system first, and then, by connecting a second generator to the network. The test results are achieved from the numerical simulation using the data of a distribution line recognized in the literature.