A fault location technique for rural distribution feeders

This work presents a digital fault location technique for rural distribution feeders, using the voltage and current data at a single location. Rural distribution feeders include single-phase, two-phase, and three-phase laterals off a main three-phase primary distribution feeder. The fault location scheme presented here attempts to account for the multiphase laterals, the unbalanced conditions, and the unsymmetrical nature of distribution feeders by continually updating voltage and current vectors at set locations within the system. The updated voltage and current vectors are the estimates of the 60-Hz phasor quantities obtained using a recursive optimal estimation algorithm. The distance to the fault is then estimated using a method based on the apparent impedance approach and the updated voltage and current vectors. Another consideration is the ability to determine the fault location on a lateral. A simulation of an actual rural distribution feeder using the Electromagnetic Transients Program (EMTP) is used to test the approach