Single-Ended Traveling Wave Based Fault Location on Two Terminal Transmission Lines

Ngu Eng Eng

Faculty of Engineering Multimedia University Selangor, Malaysia
Abstract A single-ended traveling wave (TW) based fault location algorithm has been presented in this paper. The distance of the fault is determined using the time difference between the first two consecutive alpha modes of the current TWs observed at one end of the line. To apply the TW principle to locate ground faults the faulted half of the line must be identified and for this purpose the impedance based technique is applied. The fundamental components of the voltage and current signals for impedance calculation are extracted using Fourier series. The proposed algorithm which combines the impedance based method with the TW based fault location has been tested with different types of faults, different fault resistance values and different fault inception angles using ATP/EMTP simulations. Keywords-traveling wave; fault location; impedance; Fourer series; ATP/EMTP

Krishnathevar Ramar
Faculty of Engineering Multimedia University Selangor, Malaysia from the midpoint fault. In [2], faulted half of the line segment of a two-terminal line is identified by checking on the polarity of the first three consecutive high frequency transient signals detected at both ends of the line. The fault is identified to be in the first half of the line if the first two waves are of the same polarity but opposite to the third one. An assembly of impedance and TW based fault location methods is reported in [3], where the approximate distance of the fault has been calculated using the impedance based measurement and the accuracy is then improved by the TW based method. In this method the identification of the faulted half of the line is not required. Cross correlation method between the forward and backward traveling waves to identify the fault region has been proposed in [4]. It may be noted that synchronized measurement of data all ends are not required in the above methods. If synchronized data at both ends of a two terminal line along with the time stamping (made possible by GPS) are available then the faulted half of the line can easily be identified by comparing the time of arrival of the incident waves at both ends [5]-[7]. A TW and Wavelet Transform (WT) based fault location algorithm for three terminal lines that requires data synchronization using GPS has been reported in [8]. In this method the faulted line is identified by observing the instant of arrival of the first wave in the terminals and the fault is located based on the comparison of the distance of the fault previously calculated with reference to two arbitrary terminals, to the length of each line of the system. In this paper fault location in two terminal lines is considered. The accuracy of identifying the faulted half of the line proposed in [2] for two terminal lines may not be reliable as the identification of the polarities of the TWs using WT will be difficult. The faulted half of the line is identified in this paper using an impedance based algorithm. This method is different from the one reported in [3] wherein the approximate distance of the fault is computed using the impedance based algorithm. On the other hand, in this paper the approximate impedance based algorithm is developed to identify the faulted section only. Once the faulted line segment is known, the distance of the fault is then calculated using the TW based algorithm. Daubechies-4 (db4) mother wavelet is used in DWT to extract the time information required in the fault distance calculation. The proposed algorithm will be tested on a constant distributed parameter line model, namely Clarke

I.

INTRODUCTION

In order to locate the fault on a transmission and/or a distribution line, the utility personnel has to locate the fault accurately. Accurate location of the fault saves the time of the maintenance crews to reach the faulted section of the long transmission line, which is usually a few hundred kilometers away from both ends of the line. Unavailability of the accurate and reliable information about the faulted line segment can cause the delay on power restoration, wastage of time, man power and material resources. As the fast, accurate and reliable fault location on power system has become increasingly important issue for the utility industries, various single-ended and double-ended traveling wave (TW) based fault classification and location algorithms have been developed. To apply TW methods for fault location using single end measurement, identification of the faulted half of the line in two terminal lines, and faulted line segment and faulted half of the line in three terminal lines is very important. Faulted line identification for three-terminal overhead transmission line based on the magnitude of the first peak of the aerial mode wavelet transform coefficient, WTC2 has been reported in [1], where the WTC2 will always be significantly higher at the sending end of the faulted line compared to those obtained at the healthy line. The faulted half of the line in three terminal lines is determined by comparing the time difference between the arrival time of the first aerial mode of the TW and the ground mode with the pre-calculated time information obtained

978-1-4244-4547-9/09/$26.00 2009 IEEE

TENCON 2009

model under different fault conditions such as various fault inception angle, fault distances and fault resistances. II. SINGLE ENDED CURRENT TRAVELING WAVE BASED FAULT LOCATION METHOD

Fig. 1 shows the two terminals power transmission system that will be used in this study, where the system is modeled and simulated using ATPDrawTM, a graphical and mouse-driven pre-processor to the Alternative Transients Program (ATP) version of the Electromagnetic Transients Program (EMTP) [9]. The total length of the simulated transmission line is 200 km with the Thevenins equivalent source impedances at both ends. The fault is created at a distances xi from terminal S and the source impedances are modeled using symmetric RL coupled line with the positive and zero sequence resistances and inductances as shown below: R1 = 0.06 , L1 = 39.99 mH R0 = 0.13 , L0 = 23.71 mH It is suggested in [2] to model the busbars at both end of the line for high frequency transient analysis by capacitors connected to the ground. A capacitance of 0.001 F has been chosen in this work. A. Tower Configuration The tower configuration as illustrated by Fig. 2 is used in this study and the simulation is performed using constant distributed parameter (Clarke) line model. A perfect conduction ground condition has been assumed. The required data for this type of line model such as positive and zero sequence line resistances in ohm per unit length, surge impedance in ohm and TW propagation velocity in length per second can be calculated using Line Constants supporting program [10] available in ATP. Detailed information on the type of conductor and shield wire with the size and resistance per unit length can be obtained from [11]. B. Fault Classification and Faulted Line Section Identification The proposed fault location algorithm consists of three major steps: (i) classification of fault type, (ii) identification of faulted half of the line and (iii) calculation fault distance. There is no need to identify the faulted half of the line in the case of ungrounded faults. For any ungrounded fault, (lineto-line or three phases fault), the fault distance from each sending end can simply be calculated using the first two consecutive aerial modes of the TW as the wave that get reflected from the remote sending end to the measuring end is always very insignificant and thus it is hardly detected by the wavelet analysis. Therefore, the first detected TW is the one initiated by the fault and the second detected wave is always
Fig. 2: Tower configuration of 400-kV test system [11].

the one reflected by the discontinuity in the fault point. But in the case of grounded faults the reflection from the remote sending end will be detected at the measuring end. Thus, the fault type classification to distinguish grounded fault from an ungrounded fault is essential for fault location and it can be easily done using the method proposed in [1], by utilizing ground mode level-1 detail (D10) WT coefficients (WTC). If the magnitude of D10 is found to be insignificant (less than 10-3) then the fault is identified as the ungrounded fault. For grounded fault, a reliable impedance based method has been proposed in this work to identify the faulted half of line section. As the aim is to identify only the faulted half of the line, the impedance based fault location is derived by neglecting the capacitance of the transmission line and assuming the phase angle difference between the fault current and the pure fault current component of the phase current measured at the sending end to be negligibly small. Referring to Fig. 3, the approximate fault distance based on impedance based algorithm for phase BC-to-ground (B-C-G) and phase Ato-ground (A-G) faults can be computed using (1) and (2), respectively [12].

m =

V 1b V 1c . (Z 2 Z 3 ) I1
0

(1)

m =

Im{ V 1 a ( I 1 a I 1 a ) } . 0 Im{ Z 1 I 1 ( I 1 a I 1 a ) }

(2)

Fig. 1: One line diagram for the 400-kV transmission system.

In the equations V1a, V1b & V1c are the three-phase voltages during fault, I1 is the three-phase fault current vector at the measuring end, I1a is the difference between during fault and pre-fault phase A current, I1a0 is the difference between the during fault and pre-fault zero sequence currents, Zi denotes the

ith row of line impedance matrix Z and m is the fraction of the line length. Im{ } denotes the imaginary part of the complex number with the bracket. If the calculated value m is less than 0.5 (the midpoint of the line), the fault is said to be in the first half of the line. The summary of the proposed single-ended fault location algorithm is as shown in Fig. 3. C. Traveling Wave Based Fault Location Method Once the type of fault and the faulted half of the line have been identified the next step is to accurately calculate the distance of the fault from terminal S as illustrated in the flow chart given in Fig. 3. Referring to the Lattice diagram shown in Fig. 4, the fault distance xi can be calculated using (3):

xi = ( t v ) / 2,

(3)

where t = ts2 ts1, is the time difference between the first two consecutive alpha mode TW arriving at the terminal S and v is the aerial mode wave propagation velocity with the speed of 2.93953 105 km/s. Any suitable admissible wavelet can be used in the wavelet analysis for fault location [1], and hence db4 mother wavelet is used in the proposed fault location method to extract the high frequency transient signals from the TW measured at terminal S. III. SIMULATED CASE STUDY AND RESULTS

Fig. 4: Lattice diagram for (a) grounded fault and (b) ungrounded fault. For ungrounded fault, arrival of the TW that gets reflected at the remote sending end to the measuring terminal is very insignificant and hardly can be seen in the wavelet analysis.

the line starting from 10 km from terminal S up to the midpoint with the increment of 10 km. The simulation has been done with various fault resistances and fault inception angles. Results obtained are discussed in the next section. A. Fault Classification Fig. 5(a) and Fig. 5(b) show the magnitude of D10 for B-CG (grounded) and B-C (ungrounded) faults, respectively for the faults at 50 km from terminal S. It can be clearly observed that the peak of the WTC of the incident wave involving ground is very significant compared to the ungrounded fault. The calculated fault distance for ungrounded fault is 49.974 km. B. Faulted Line Section Identification for Grounded Fault For impedance based computation using either (1) or (2), both voltage and current signals are to be measured at terminal S. Fourier series analysis is applied on these signals in order to extract the required fundamental components. The fault is said to be in the first half of the line if the calculated m value is less

The fault analyses for line-to-ground, line-to-line and balanced three phase faults have been done by using Clarke line model. The power frequency of the system is assumed to be 50 Hz and the sampling frequency is chosen as 1 MHz. The simulation has been done for faults at different locations along

Fig. 3: Flow chart for the proposed single-ended fault location algorithm.

Fig. 5: Level 1 detail coefficients for (a) grounded fault and (b) ungrounded fault.

than 0.5. Once the faulted line segment has been identified, the fault point can be calculated using (3). If the fault section identified by the impedance algorithm and the fault distance calculated using (3) are in the same line section then the exact fault distance is as computed by (3). Otherwise, the exact fault distance is the total length of the line minus the distance calculated by (3). Table 1 gives the results of the tests conducted. From the table it is observed that the proposed scheme is very accurate. However, for ground faults very near to the midpoint the impedance based algorithm may identify the faulted section wrongly. In such situations the maximum error observed was 3.0 %. However, this error can be reduced by using more accurate impedance based algorithms. It is worth mentioning that once the fault section is identified correctly, the fault location is computed with a high accuracy of 100 m. C. Effects of Fault Resistance & Fault Inception Angle Results of the simulations show that the proposed fault analysis scheme is insensitive to fault resistance and fault inception angle IV. CONCLUSIONS

S. Rajendra, P. G. McLaren, Traveling wave techniques applied to the protection of teed circuits: Multi-Phase/ Multi-circuit system, IEEE Trans. on Power Apparatus and Systems, vol. PAS-104, pp. 33513557, Dec. 1985. [5] H. Lee, Development of accurate traveling wave fault locator using global positioning satellites, in Proc. Spring Meeting Can. Elect. Assoc., Montreal, QC, Canada, Mar. 1993. [6] F. Jiang, Z. Q. Bo, G. Weller, S. M. Chin, M. A. Redfern, A GPS based fault location scheme for distribution line using wavelet transform technique, in Proc. 3rd Int. Con. on Power System Transients, Budapest, 1999, pp. 224228. [7] A. Elhaffar, M. Lehtonen, An improved GPS current traveling-wave fault locator in EHV transmission networks using few recordings, in 2005 Proc. Int. Conf. on Future Power Systems, pp. 5. [8] M. D. Silva, M. Oleskovicz, D. V. Coury, A hybrid fault locator for three-terminal lines based on wavelet transforms, Electric Power Systems Research, vol. 78, pp. 19801988, Nov. 2008. [9] L. Prikler., H. K. Hidalen. (October 2002). ATPDraw Version 3.5 for Windows (Preliminary release No. 1.1) [Online]. Available: www.elkraft.ntnu.no/atpdraw/ATPDMan3r3.pdf [10] Canadian/American EMTP User Group, Alternative Transients Program Rule Book, European EMTP-ATP Users Group e.V., 19871998. [11] J. A. Martinez-Velasco (2009, April, 28). Computer analysis of voltage variations in power systems: Application to overvoltages and voltage sag, IEEE PES Distinguished Lecture Program [Online]. pp 34. Available: www.ieeeprc.org/Activities/PR2V7BN.pdf [12] K. Ramar, A. A. Eisa, New fault location algorithms for overhead transmission lines, Int. Journal of Power and Energy Systems, vol. 28, pp. 241251, 2008.

[4]

A single-ended fault analysis algorithm, which combines the reliable and approximate impedance based identification of the faulted half of the line and the accurate current TW based fault location method has been proposed in this paper. Simulation results show that the accuracy of the proposed algorithm is not significantly affected by fault inception angles and fault resistances. The accuracy of the impedance based fault section identification is found to be 97%. Once the fault section is identified correctly, the fault location is computed with an accuracy of 100 m. Further work is in progress to extend the method for multi-terminal lines and distribution systems. REFERENCES
[1] [2] C. Y. Evrenosoglu, A. Abur, Travelling wave based fault location for teed circuits, IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, vol. 20, pp. 11151121, April 2005. Z. Q. Bo, A. T. Johns, A. K. Aggarwal, A novel fault locator based on the detection of fault generated high frequency transients, in 1997 Proc. Sixth IEE Developments in Power Systems Protection Conf., pp.197 200. X. Y. Zheng, X. M. Li, J. Y. Ding, Z. Y. Duan, Study on impedancetraveling wave assembled algorithm in one-terminal fault location system for transmission lines, in 2008 3rd Int. Conf. Electric Utility Deregulation and Restructuring and Power Technologies, pp. 1123 1126. TABLE I. Fault type AG BG CG ABG ACG BCG
10 20 30

[3]

RESULT OF THE TESTS CONDUCTED FOR GROUNDED FAULTS Calculated m value for xi km
40 50 60 70 80 90 100

0.0520 0.0502 0.0523 0.0503 0.0476 0.0513

0.1026 0.0991 0.1031 0.1015 0.0966 0.1025

0.1532 0.1480 0.1539 0.1531 0.1468 0.1537

0.2038 0.1971 0.2046 0.1999 0.1934 0.2050

0.2543 0.2462 0.2553 0.2487 0.2419 0.2565

0.3047 0.2955 0.306 0.3006 0.2932 0.3081

0.3546 0.3447 0.3567 0.3518 0.3441 0.3599

0.4049 0.3941 0.4075 0.4009 0.3932 0.4118

0.4558 0.4436 0.4588 0.4567 0.4486 0.4638

0.5053 0.4929 0.5097 0.5038 0.4962 0.5160