Three-Terminal Lines Fault Location Using Two Main Terminals Data in the Presence of Renewable Energy Sources

Abstract

Penetration of renewable energy sources (RESs) in power systems is increased considerably and fault location algorithms face considerable problems with the presence of RESs. Also, the third terminal of three-terminal lines is expanded as a cost-effective solution to energize the remote areas of medium voltage (MV) systems, while its data may not be measured and easily available. In addition, in cases where this data is obtainable, due to the excessive harmonics of the inverter-based resources (IBRs) in that terminal, the measured data includes high error. Therefore, providing a method for fault location in three-terminal lines in the presence of RESs is challenging. This paper proposes an accurate method to identify the fault location on these lines incorporating RESs without requiring the third terminal data. Due to current transformers saturation and transient response of capacitive voltage transformers, the fault location based on the faulted phase data contains significant errors. The proposed method combines both the faulty and healthy phases data to improve the accuracy of fault location. Its performance is evaluated on a MV system for different scenarios including various fault resistances, locations and types, and third terminal integration of RESs. The obtained results confirm superiority of the proposed method.