Fault Location Using Local Mean Decomposition on Traveling Waves with Three Current Measurements in an Overhead Conductor

Abstract

A fault-location scheme based on local mean decomposition on traveling waves with three current measurements in an overhead conductor is presented herein. In the fault-location scheme, local mean decomposition is used to detect the arrival time of the initial traveling wave at each measurement. To obtain more accurate wave velocity, a third Rogowski coil current transformer is used to measure the fault current in the midway of a transmission line besides a couple of measurements used by the two-ended traveling-wave method at both its ends. The faulted line section can be identified by comparing the phase angles of the measured current data at its two ends; wave velocity can then be calculated by the ratio of the length of the non-faulted line section to the time that the fault wave travels through this line section. The proposed scheme can reduce the errors of previous methods on wave velocity determination. After wave velocity is determined, the fault distance can be calculated according to the two-ended traveling-wave method. The proposed fault-location scheme is tested by many simulations, and the results demonstrate it has higher accuracy than those using wavelet transform and Hilbert–Huang transform.