Advancements In Machine Learning Algorithms for Enhanced Fault Analysis and Categorization in Power Systems

Abstract

With the growing number of sources, complexity, and dynamic elements of power systems that are prone to disturbance and electrical faults, conventional methods of fault detection are lagging in power system protection. Major faults are exposed to transmission lines due to several factors, such as climate change, heat, lightning strokes, sudden spikes of current and voltage etc. Protecting these lines from faults is cumbersome using traditional methods. However, with the increasing complexity of transmission lines in power systems, advanced technologies such as machine learning come into play for prior fault detection and identification. ML is becoming a popular and intelligent technique for monitoring and predicting health and diagnosing faults in transmission lines of power systems. Since ML is evolving at a faster pace and given the need for and growth of advanced technologies like ML and artificial intelligence, this paper emphasizes comparative analysis of various ML algorithms for transmission line fault analysis. Comparisons for various line faults (LL, LLG, LG, LLL, LLLG, no fault) in power systems using machine learning techniques have been done in terms of accuracy, precision, and other performance measures. The results of the accuracy of various algorithms are represented as tabulated facts in this paper. The Python programming language has been utilized over a dataset to calculate results. For each algorithm, the confusion matrix shows the accuracy of predicting faults over the testing data after training the model or algorithm on the training data. Upon completion of analysis and comparison of MLT's like LR, SVM, DT, RF, K-NN, and gradient descent for analysis of transmission line fault detection, RF and DT machine learning algorithms provided the best accuracy and results. Finally, this paper gives a brief overview of various line faults, ML algorithms accuracy for each transmission fault in a confusion matrix and tabular format and concluded the best machine learning algorithms for power system transmission line fault identification.