An Adaptive PMU-based Fault Location Estimation System with a Fault-Tolerance and Load-Balancing Communication Network

Modern fault detection/location technique for an EHV/UHV transmission network usually works based on the data measured by Phaser Measurement Units (PMU). The synchronized voltage and current phasors measured by PMU are transmitted to a monitoring center for analysis. Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers are also equipped with PMU, which is called GPS-PMU, to increase the accuracy of fault detection/location by tagging all of the measured data with time stamps. Once a fault was occurred in the transmission network, the time of those measured data transmitted to the monitoring center is crucial. Therefore, a high-quality communication network is required to reduce the response time of the fault detection/location algorithm. In this study, an evolutionary routing algorithm is developed to handle guarantee the minimal data transmission delay, and also robust against faults in communication system itself. The proposed routing algorithm has been tested through two kinds of experimental simulations, and the result shows that the proposed algorithm can provide minimal transmission delay by balancing the traffic over the communication network, and while the network topology has been changed, the proposed routing algorithm can adapt to the new topology in a very short time without seriously affect the response time of the transmission network fault detection/location algorithm.