A Traveling Wave-Based Fault Location Method Employing VMD-TEO for Distribution Network

In this paper, a traveling wave based fault location method is proposed for distribution networks. Before fault occurs, an intrinsic distance difference matrix (IDDM) is established based on the characteristics of traveling wave propagation and the topology of distribution network. After the fault, the initial fault traveling wave signals are decomposed into several intrinsic mode function (IMF) signals by variational mode decomposition (VMD), and the first IMF signal is analyzed by teager energy operator (TEO) to determine the arriving time of initial fault traveling waves. According to the double-ended traveling wave method and the arrival time of traveling wave at all recorders, a fault distance difference matrix (FDDM) is built. By comparing the difference between IDDM and FDDM, a fault branch determination matrix (FBDM) and the lateral index Q are used to locate the fault. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified via EMTP/ATP simulations. Results show that the proposed method has a high fault location accuracy, and does not need that all terminals of lines are installed traveling wave recorders.