A simple faulted phase-based fault distance estimation algorithm for a loop distribution system

Abstract

This paper presents a single ended faulted phase-based traveling wave fault localization algorithm for loop distribution grids which is that the sensor can get many reflected signals from the fault point to face the complexity of localization. This localization algorithm uses a band pass filter to remove noise from the corrupted signal. The arriving times of the faulted phase-based filtered signals can be obtained by using phase-modal and discrete wavelet transformations. The estimated fault distance can be calculated using the traveling wave method. The proposed algorithm presents detail level analysis using three detail levels coefficients. The proposed algorithm is tested with MATLAB simulation single line to ground fault in a 10 kV grounded loop distribution system. The simulation result shows that the faulted phase time delay can give better accuracy than using conventional time delays. The proposed algorithm can give fault distance estimation accuracy up to 99.7% with 30 dB contaminated signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the nearest lines from the measured terminal.