Modeling and simulation of intermittent arc effects on traveling wave based fault location techniques for distribution network

Xiaoxin Liu,Biguang Kong,Kun Yu,Baiyang Liu,Bicai Pu,Jianhui Feng

doi:10.21595/vp.2020.21356

Abstract

With rapidly developing of the distribution networks the rate of the earth fault increases sharply. Aiming to fault location for distribution networks, many techniques are proposed and applied in distribution networks throughout the world. However, until now the technology for precise fault point location has not been successfully implemented in engineering practice. Traveling wave based methods as common techniques are widely applied in transmission line protection for locating fault point. However, these methods face severe challenge in fault location for distribution networks. The main reason is that the intermittent arc fault easily results in failure of detecting inceptive travelling wave and this intermittent arc is a common earth fault in distribution networks compared with transmission networks. In this paper, a simplified distribution line is built by making reference to the two parallel lossless transmission lines system. Then, the intermittent arc effects on traveling wave based method are modeled and discussed. Finally, the reason why these travelling wave based methods are hard to locate fault point precisely is illustrated.

Highlights

With rapidly developing of the distribution networks the rate of the earth fault increases sharply
In terms of the theory of the algorithm, the fault location methods can be classified into five main categories: 1) Physical inspection method, 2) Calculation method, 3) Traveling wave method, 4) Distributed measurement method, 5) Intelligence method
At the fault point x, the intermittent arc is represented by the combination of the voltage source, V and current source, I

Summary

Introduction

With rapidly developing of the distribution networks the rate of the earth fault increases sharply. For the distribution networks especially with high PV penetration level, taking advantage of measurements from multiple types of metering devices such as travelling wave sensors, fault passage indicators and phasor measurement units, and at the same time adopting practical intelligence algorithm, the novel method for fault location will be proposed soon. This type of novel fault location method as a part of functionality of distribution automation systems is one of the directions of the future research and has been increasingly studied. Network terminals, enhancing data analysis capabilities, and expanding visualization scenarios

Distribution line model

Simulation results

Conclusions