The document discusses a study on wide area fault location methods for power transmission networks, focusing on a reactance-based approach that improves fault detection accuracy. It highlights the importance of fault location in power systems, with the new method allowing for centralized data analysis from various locations using synchrophasors. Simulation results indicated that the reactance method outperforms traditional impedance methods, with plans for future enhancements to improve accuracy further.

1. Muhd Hafizi Idris, Mohd Rafi Adzman, Mohammad Faridun Naim
Tajuddin & Ahmad Zaidi Abdullah
Wide Area Fault Location for Power
Transmission Network using Reactance Based
Method
Centre of Excellence for Renewable Energy (CERE)
School of Electrical Systems Engineering
Universiti Malaysia Perlis

2. Introduction
• Fault location is very important in power system.
• Fault in power system must be located as fast as possible.
• Wide area fault location method is the newest method which can act as
backup to current fault location methods.
• Using this method, utility workers can get the fault location information
from their office or from the central location.
• It is introduced due to the advance in communication, smart grid,
substation automation and intelligent electronic device (IED).

3. Introduction
• In wide area implementations, synchrophasors or PMU (phasor
measurement unit) are put at several specific and strategic locations in
the networks.
• The data given by PMU are voltage and current phasors, the frequency
and rate of change of frequency (ROCOF).
• The data from many PMUs are sent to a data centre (PDC) where the data
then recorded and processed for various applications.
• All the data must be synchronized to a common clock time using Global
Positioning System (GPS).

4. Literature Review
• Fault location methods:
– One-terminal methods
– Two-terminal methods
– Wide-area methods
• One terminal methods:
- use measurement from one
end only
- Use many assumptions
- Many unknown parameters.
- Lowest accuracy
• Two-terminal methods:
-use measurement from both
ends.
-Reduce many assumptions.
-Better accuracy than one-terminal
method.
-Require communication channel
• Wide-area methods;
-Newest method.
-data from various
PMU/synchrophasor locations
-Data sent to a data centre or PDC

5. Literature Review
• Some wide-area methods:
References Methods
[19]-[22] Impedance based
[23]-[27] Travelling wave
[28] Fuzzy clustering analysis
[29] Fault model
[25], [30] Wavelet transform

6. Scopes of Research
• Preliminary results
• Wide-area
• Impedance based method – reactance
• Rules based system.
• IEEE 5 bus system.
• Phase to phase faults.
• PMU buses: 1, 2 & 4.

7. Reactance Based Method
• Derived from simple impedance based method:
• Only consider the imaginary part of simple impedance based
algorithms.
• More accurate than simple impedance based method.
• Reduce the effects of fault resistance where fault impedance
is resistive in nature.
Simple impedance
based method

8. Reactance Based Method
• Phase-to-phase fault was chosen in this research.
• From simple impedance based method;
• Expanded in trigonometric function;
• Impedance magnitude;

9. Reactance Based Method
• Voltage difference angle;
• Current difference angle;
• Impedance angle;
• Reactance of fault impedance loop;

10. Methodologies
Overall simulation model of IEEE 5 bus system
PMU buses

11. Methodologies
Substation subsystems

12. Methodologies
Transmission line subsystem

13. Methodologies
Start
Calculate fault impedance and reactance for
different phase-to-phase fault types (AB, BC & CA)
at each PMU bus (1, 2 & 4) connected line
Compare the lowest fault impedance between
different phase-to-phase fault types at each PMU
connected line
Compare the lowest fault impedance
between all connected lines at each PMU
Compare the lowest fault impedance
between all PMU buses
Display the detected PMU buses, line
number, phase-to-phase fault type, and fault
location
End
Developed wide-area fault location rules

14. Methodologies
PMU connected line subsystem
Compare between
different
phase-to-phase
fault types

15. Methodologies
Nominator subsystem

16. Methodologies
Denominator subsystem

17. Methodologies
AB fault calculation subsystem

18. Methodologies
PMU subsystem
Compare between
different
PMU connected
lines

19. Methodologies
Fault location subsystem
Compare between
different
PMU buses

20. Simulation Results
• Faults have been located at different transmission lines with different
phase to phase fault types, fault locations and fault resistances.
• The accuracy of fault location estimation is calculated using equation;
• Where;
FL = fault location in km

21. • The developed fault location rules
& algorithm correctly detected
the PMU buses, faulted line and
phase to phase fault type.
• The reactance method (X) is
superior than simple impedance
based method (Z).
• The fault location errors also very
small with the highest is 3.2424 %
for fault happened at line 1-2, 48
km from local bus 1 with Rf = 10
Ω.

22. Simulation Results
• Example of BC fault occurred at 0.04 s at line 4-5, 40 km from local bus 4 with Rf = 5 Ω.

23. Simulation Results
• Example of BC fault occurred at 0.04 s at line 4-5, 40 km from local bus 4 with Rf = 5 Ω.
Voltage waveforms Current waveforms

24. Future Works
• For a higher number of bus system, there will be many transmission line which are not
directly connected to PMU buses because complexity will increase when higher number
of PMU is used.
• Because these lines are not directly connected to PMU buses, many factors will influence
fault location accuracy such as infeed current, load current and other power system
parameters.
• In the future works, higher number of buses will be modeled and the accuracy of simple
reactance based algorithm with combination of the developed rules will be determined.
• Other techniques such as using voltage magnitude, current magnitude, current direction
and other methods will be combined with this method to increase the accuracy of
overall fault location detection and estimation.

25. Conclusion
• The research on wide area fault location using reactance based method which
combined with a rule based system has been successfully conducted.
• The methods can be used to estimate wide-area fault location for different fault
types, faulted lines, fault locations and fault resistances.
• By using reactance based method, the effects of fault resistance which is significant in
simple impedance based method ca be reduced.