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4, OCTOBER 2010
A Decision Tree-Based Method for Fault
Classification in Double-Circuit
Transmission Lines
A. Jamehbozorg and S. M. Shahrtash
AbstractIn this paper, a novel method for fault classification
of double-circuit transmission lines is presented. The proposed
method needs voltages and currents of only one side of the pro-
tected line. After detecting the exact time of fault inception and
calculating the odd harmonics of the measured signals, up to the
nineteenth, a decision tree algorithm has been employed for recog-
nition of the intercircuit fault type. Also, the proposed method is
extended for classification of crossover faults in these transmission
lines. Simulation results have shown that the proposed method can
classify the faults in less than a quarter of a cycle with the highest
possible accuracy.
Index TermsDecision tree, double-circuit transmission line,
fault classification.
I. INTRODUCTION
N THE accompanying paper [1], the fault classification in
I single-circuit transmission lines has been studied. In this
paper, fault classification in double-circuit transmission lines,
including intercircuit and crossover faults, is investigated.
Indeed, the fault classification in double-circuit lines is more
complicated than in single-circuit ones. This is because of the
mutual coupling between the phases of the two circuits which
imposes distortions on the current waveforms of the phases of
the healthy circuit, whenever a fault has occurred on a phase of
the other circuit. Generally, according to the published methods,
the fault classification accuracy is lower whereas the required
classification time is more for double-circuit transmission lines,
rather than the classification methods for the single-circuit lines.
The presented methods for classification of faults in double-
circuit lines can be divided into two different categories: the first
one contains the methods which only consider intercircuit faults.
In this category, conventional methods have tried to compensate
the coupling effect between the circuits by using adaptive co-
efficients [2][5]. But these methods need normally more than
one cycle of postfault data for performing the classification. In
pattern recognition-based methods, a number of soft computing
Manuscript received April 12, 2009; revised April 26, 2010. Date of publi-
cation August 23, 2010; date of current version September 22, 2010. Paper no.
TPWRD-00294-2009.
A. Jamehbozorg is with Tennessee Technological University (TTU),
Cookeville, TN 38501 USA (e-mail: ajamebozorg@ee.iust.ac.ir).
S. M. Shahrtash is with the Center of Excellence for Power System Automa-
tion and Operation, Department of Electrical Engineering, Iran University of
Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran (e-mail: shahrtash@iust.ac.ir).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2010.2050911
0885-8977/$26.00 2010 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO.
methods, such as neural networks [6][8] and wavelet transform
[9], have been used.
The second category can be assigned to the methods which
can classify intracircuit (crossover) faults as well. The methods
in this domain should consider the faults that involve one phase
of each circuit, at least and, therefore, more complexity is as-
sumed. Heretofore, no method is presented for classification of
these kinds of faults.
In this paper, a decision-tree (DT)-based method is presented
for fault classification in double-circuit transmission lines. Ac-
cording to the traveling waves initiated by the fault, a fault de-
tector, which determines the exact fault inception time, is used.
Then, through a selected data window and by applying half-
cycle discrete Fourier transform (HCDFT), the amplitude and
phases of the first ten odd harmonics (up to the 19nth harmonic)
of the six currents of the two circuits at the relaying point are
calculated. In the next step, these values are used as input fea-
tures for a formerly trained decision tree and the fault classi-
fication is accomplished. The proposed procedure is extended
to perform the classification task for intercircuit and crossover
faults on double-circuit transmission lines. The simulations are
carried out by EMTDC/PSCAD [10] software, and the results
are compared with other published ones.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The proposed
algorithm is described in Section II, and the results are given
and compared with the others in Section III. The discussions on
the contributions of different parameters of the algorithm and
the power system on the results are given in Section IV. Finally,
the classification algorithm for crossover faults is proposed in
Section V.
II. FAULT CLASSIFICATION IN DOUBLE-CIRCUIT LINES
The proposed algorithm for the classification of faults in
double-circuit lines has a similar structure to the one proposed
by the authors for single-circuit lines [1]. In this case, also, the
Random Forest algorithm with 110 trees is used.
The training process of DT is illustrated in Fig. 1. As shown,
this stage starts with making simulations of different fault con-
ditions on the considered transmission-line model. Then, half-
cycle data windows must be filled with the optimum combi-
nation of prefault and postfault samples of each of six phase
currents (of the two circuits), provided that there is the highest
possible accuracy for the overall classification algorithm. The
optimal combination is obtained by inspecting the classifica-
tion accuracy versus the number of postfault samples, where
the latter is changed from the maximum number (filling out the
JAMEHBOZORG AND SHAHRTASH: A DECISION TREE-BASED METHOD FOR FAULT CLASSIFICATION 2185

Fig. 1. Flowchart of the training stage.

data window) to a minimum which maintains the desired accu-

racy (or vice versa from one postfault sample up to the smallest
number which provides the desired accuracy). The remaining
part of the data window is filled with the required number of the
prefault samples in each case. The effort for keeping the number Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the proposed algorithm for double-circuit lines.
of postfault samples as small as possible, in the data window, is
for optimizing the classification time as well.
the training stage and results in decreasing the classification ac-
On the other hand, the classifier in its testing stage, as shown
curacy. This contribution can be completely eliminated by ap-
in Fig. 2, should employ a fault detector, as a necessity to make
plying the data sets with altered structures to the DT training
the structure of the selected data window of the input features
process in addition to the base (optimum) data sets [1].
similar to the structure in the training stage (i.e., to keep the
Fig. 2 has shown the schematic diagram of the proposed
ratio of the number of prefault and postfault samples the same
method (i.e., in the testing stage). As shown in this figure and
as this ratio in the training process of DT). It is worth mentioning
in Fig. 1, in this case, the input features are selected as the
that dissimilarity between these structures causes a considerable
currents of the six phases. The voltages are not used, because
decrease in classification accuracy [1].
they are the same for similar phases of the two circuits and will
The exact fault inception time is determined by using the
make misclassifications for similar intercircuit faults of the two
backward traveling wave propagated due to a fault occurrence,
circuits.
according to the following relation:
Therefore, after detecting the fault inception, data windows
using the optimum combination of prefault and postfault data
(1) from each input feature are created. In the next step, by ap-
plying the HCDFT, the odd harmonics of the currents of all six
where is the surge impedance of the line and and are phases, up to the 19th, are calculated. These values (amplitudes
the high-frequency components of voltage and current of one and phases) are applied to a decision tree as input features for
phase. is calculated for each phase and if its value exceeds a classification of the faults.
threshold, it means that a fault has occurred.
The contribution of the error in the performance of the fault III. RESULTS
detector is to alter the similarity (and optimality) of the struc- To apply the proposed method, a double-circuit, 400-kV-,
ture of the data window in the testing stage from the ones in 100-km-long transmission line, as shown in Fig. 3 and with the
2186 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2010

TABLE II
SYSTEM PARAMETERS FOR THE TRAINING SET

TABLE III
SYSTEM PARAMETERS FOR THE TEST SET

Fig. 3. Transmission-line model.

TABLE IV
ACCURACY AND SPEED OF THE CLASSIFICATION METHODS

Fig. 4. Single-line diagram of a double-circuit line with the same ends.

TABLE I
TRANSMISSION-LINE PARAMETERS

Finally, the calculated phasors are fed to WEKA [11] soft-

ware for fault classification by the random forest algorithm with
110 trees. Using this algorithm, the training time for 13200 cases
was about 15 min.
Results have shown that all of the 3840 test cases are clas-
sified accurately; while the classification time (the amount of
postfault data needed) is only 2.5 ms. This result is suitable in
comparison with the published methods [5][9]. Table IV has
compared the accuracy and speed of those methods, as proposed
by them, with the presented method.

Fig. 5. Fault current waveforms in phases a and a under the a g fault.
characteristics described in Table I is considered. It should be
noted that in this case, the sending and receiving ends for the
two circuits are the same (Fig. 4).
All 20 types of faults with different conditions (different fault
resistances, power-flow angles, fault inception times, and fault
locations) are simulated whereas the sampling frequency is se-
lected as 10 kHz. The results are then divided to a training set
(as shown in Table II) and test set (as shown in Table III). As an
example, the current waveform of phases and during
an fault are shown in Fig. 5.
IV. DISCUSSION
In this section, the obtained results according to different
choices for the effective parameters of the line and/or in the
proposed procedures are compared. The investigations include
the length of the protected line, the sampling frequency, and the
generalization capability of the proposed method in classifica-
tion of the exterior cases (extrapolating the training space). Also,
the accuracy of the method in double-circuit lines with different
sending and receiving ends is studied.
A. Effect of the Length of Line and Sampling Frequency
By increasing the length of the line, the classification time
for achieving 100% accuracy increases (similar to single-cir-
JAMEHBOZORG AND SHAHRTASH: A DECISION TREE-BASED METHOD FOR FAULT CLASSIFICATION
TABLE V
EFFECT OF LINE LENGTH AND SAMPLING FREQUENCY
TABLE VI
ACCURACY OF THE METHOD FOR EXTERIOR CASES
cuit lines). Moreover, for investigating the effect of sampling
frequency, the performance of the proposed method is studied
under the 5-, 10-, and 40-kHz sampling frequency.
Table V has shown the combining results to achieve 100%
accuracy for different line lengths and sampling frequencies.
Results have shown that the sampling frequency has no pre-
dictable effect on the accuracy of the proposed method; where,
indeed, it can be decreased down to the Nyquist frequency. But
as the length of the protected line is increased from 100 km to
300 km, the classification time must be increased from 2.5 ms
to 4 ms, for the 10-kHz sampling frequency. It can be seen that
this classification time is larger than the classification time with
the associated proposed method for a single-circuit line with the
same length [1].
B. Effect of Exterior Cases
To investigate the generalization capability of the proposed
method, for the cases beyond the training space, 1920 faults in
2.5 km and 97.5 km far from the relaying point (the training
cases are considered from 5 to 95 km), with the other condi-
tions similar to those considered for the test stage (Table III),
are simulated and classified. The results are shown in Table VI.
According to these results, the accuracy of the method has
remained as 100% for close-in faults. But for remote faults, the
accuracy has decreased to 98.64%.
Obviously, including the data of close-in and remote faults in
the training set will result in correct classification of these faults
as well.
C. Effect of Different Types of Ending Buses
For the sake of clarity, two cases are discussed: 1) separate
remote-end buses and 2) separate relaying buses.
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Fig. 6. Single-line diagram of a double-circuit line with separate remote-end
buses.
TABLE VII
ACCURACY VERSUS LENGTH OF THE POSTFAULT DATA FOR A DOUBLE-CIRCUIT
SREB LINE
Fig. 7. Single-line diagram of a double-circuit line with separate relaying
buses.
TABLE VIII
ACCURACY VERSUS LENGTH OF POSTFAULT DATA FOR A DOUBLE-CIRCUIT
SRB LINE
a) Lines With Separate Remote-End Buses (SREB): To
investigate the accuracy of the proposed method in this case, a
power system as in Fig. 6 is considered. The G2 bus is a weak
one 19.74) and G3 is a strong bus
1.87), while the common relaying bus is a moderate one
11.98). Training and test sets are as shown in
Tables II and III, respectively. The classification results are
shown in Table VII.
It can be seen that although 100% accuracy is achieved, the
classification time has increased from 2.5 ms to 6 ms.
b) Lines with Separate Relaying Buses (SRB): In this spe-
cial case, shown in Fig. 7, due to dissimilar voltages of similar
phases in the two circuits, the input features must include the
voltages of all six phases in addition to the six currents. The
results are shown in Table VIII, where for a data window with
4-ms postfault data, 100% accuracy is achieved.
2188
Fig. 8. Waveforms of currents of phases a , a , and b under the a b
fault.
TABLE IX
SYSTEM PARAMETERS FOR THE TRAINING SET
TABLE X
SYSTEM PARAMETERS FOR THE TEST SET
V. CROSSOVER FAULT CLASSIFICATION IN DOUBLE-CIRCUIT
TRANSMISSION LINES
The published methods, for fault classification in double-cir-
cuit power transmission lines, have enabled the classification of
the intercircuit faults and, at least, have not shown their capa-
bility for classifying crossover faults. But the proposed algo-
rithm for double-circuit fault classification (Fig. 2) can be used
for the classification of crossover faults as well.
For estimating the accuracy of the method on crossover
faults, the double-circuit line described in Section III is used.
The training and test sets are shown in Tables IX and X, re-
spectively. As an example, the waveforms of currents in phases
, , and under an fault are shown in Fig. 8.
Simulation results have shown that the required classification
time is only 3 ms and all crossover faults are classified correctly.
Therefore, to classify all type of faults in a double-circuit trans-
mission line, by two separate decision trees (one for inter and
the other for crossover faults), the classification time (i.e., the
amount of postfault samples in the selected data window) should
be increased to 3 ms, for 100% accuracy (in comparison with
2.5 ms given for the same line in Section III for only intercircuit
faults).
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2010
Furthermore, for investigating the possibility of fault classi-
fication in double-circuit lines, by only one decision tree, new
training and test sets (resulting from the merge of Tables II and
IX for the training set, and Tables III and X for the test set) are
created. Results have shown that the new trained decision tree
(with 110 trees in the random forest algorithm) can classify all
type of faults (including inter and crossover faults) with 100%
accuracy, again by 3-ms postfault data. The reason for this result
can be stated as no effective interference between the patterns
of inter and crossover faults has existed that can reduce the ac-
curacy or increase the required postfault data.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a novel application of the decision tree for fault
classification in double-circuit transmission lines is introduced.
The proposed method only requires data from one side of the
protected line and the decision making is performed in less than
a quarter cycle.
In this method, the currents of all six phases are used by
HCDFT for calculating the phasors of odd harmonics up to the
nineteenth harmonic. These values are then fed to a DT for
fault classification. Also, the classification of crossover faults
in double-circuit lines is examined by means of the proposed
method, and these faults are correctly classified as well.
The influence of different parameters of the transmission line
and the characteristics of the proposed procedure are investi-
gated and represented, where the generalization capability and
robustness of the proposed method are proved.
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JAMEHBOZORG AND SHAHRTASH: A DECISION TREE-BASED METHOD FOR FAULT CLASSIFICATION
A. Jamehbozorg was born in Hamedan, Iran,
in 1982. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
in electrical engineering from Iran University of
Science and Technology, Iran, in 2005 and 2008,
respectively, and is currently pursuing the Ph.D.
degree in power system engineering at Tennessee
Technological University, Cookeville.
search areas include protection, electromagnetic transient analysis, and power
system studies.
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S. M. Shahrtash was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1960.
He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering
from Abadan Institute of Technology, Abadan, Iran,
in 1980, and the M.S. degree in electrical engi-
neering from the University of Manchester Institute
of Science and Technology, Manchester, U.K., in
1985, and the Ph.D. degree from Sharif University
of Technology, Iran, in 1995.
Since 1985, he has been on the academic staff of
the Electrical Engineering Department with the Iran
University of Science and Technology. His main re-