A new approach for fault location on modern distribution systems with integrated DER

Abstract

This paper proposes a new efficient and accurate fault location technique for modern distribution systems with integrated Distributed Energy Resources (DER).The algorithm requires only the voltage and current phasor information from source end of the system in case of a fault event. The main advantage is that it does not require any measurements from the Distribution Generation (DG) node, since it estimates the unknown infeed current using the known measurements and line parameters. The proposed fault location method is tested with various conditions such as type of fault, fault resistance, inception angle, source to line impedance rations (SIR), load angle and Distribution Generation (DG) penetration level by using PSCAD/EMTP simulations. The PSCAD/EMTP simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed method give high accuracy under various power system and fault conditions.