Silvio Giuseppe Di Santo

Heuristic Method for Fault Location in Distribution Feeders With the Presence of Distributed Generation

This paper presents a fault location method for power distribution networks with the presence of distributed generation (DG) units along their feeders. The proposed fault location method is based on voltage and current phasor quantities, calculated from measurements provided by intelligent electronic devices installed only at the substation bus, and on information about the electrical parameters of the feeders, stored in the utility’s database. It is capable of correctly locating the fault point using detailed models of the feeder’s line sections, information about the impedances of the loads, and the equivalent circuits of the DG units connected to the feeder. The proposed method relies on an optimization process that estimates the fault point using the Pattern Search method. A typical distribution feeder was implemented using EMTP/ATP and test data produced during the simulations were used to evaluate the method’s performance. The simulations considered variations of the fault type and phases involved, variations of the fault resistance, and input data errors. The results indicate that the method is robust and provides a high level of accuracy.

Localização de faltas em linhas de transmissão com múltiplas derivações utilizando dados de somente dois terminais

A new multiterminal continuously transposed transmission lines fault location method is presented in this paper, which it is based on steady-state pre-fault and post-fault voltage and current measured phasors at local and remote terminals to determine the fault information, which are: the section occurrence, the distance, or the occurrence point, and resistance. The main characteristic of this new method is the process of networkscanning, where the fault is located within each line section, trying to minimize by means of an objective function, the differences between the voltages and currents measured and calculated in local and remote terminals. The the error calculated by the goal function, in case of the fault to be in a certain section, is compared with the error obtained for the previous section, so the section with the largest error is dismissed. At the end of the scanning process, the method of fault location presents the section of fault occurrence, distance and resistance. The results obtained from the simulations show the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method for the fault distance, resistance and type variation.

Fault location in distribution feeders with distributed generation

This paper presents an algorithm for fault location in medium-voltage power distribution networks with distributed energy resources along their feeders. The proposed algorithm is able to locate the points of fault correctly, using voltage and current measurements acquired at the substation bus and where the distributed generation units are connected. Thus, it uses detailed information about the electrical parameters of the feeders and an estimation of the electrical loads, then proceeds with the calculations in order to pinpoint all the possible points of fault. This article presents a study case with a typical overhead distribution line simulated in the Alternative Transient Program and the results of the proposed algorithm.