Accuracy analysis using the EMD and VMD for two-terminal transmission line fault location based on traveling wave theory

Abstract

This paper presents an accuracy analysis from the application of techniques for the extraction of characteristic data from current and voltage signals in transmission line fault location based on traveling wave theory. The techniques used were the empirical mode decomposition and the variational mode decomposition associated with Teager energy operator, which helps to identify the instantaneous energy of the first intrinsic mode function. The simulation of the power system was carried out using the MATLAB/Simulink® software, for a test system consisting of a 200 km long transmission line between two Thevenin equivalents. Data is obtained from both terminals. The fault resistance was fixed at 100 Ω, but the incidence angle, the sampling rate and the fault location were varied for all fault types. The numerical and graphical results proved that the techniques can extract the characteristic data of the current and voltage signals and estimate the fault distance to the terminal with high accuracy, depending only on the sampling rate adopted.