Traveling-Wave-Based Fault-Location Technique for Transmission Grids Via Wide-Area Synchronized Voltage Measurements

This paper delineates a novel analytical and computational approach to fault location for power transmission grids. The proposed methodology involves an online and an offline stage. The online stage is based solely on the utilization of the time-of-arrival (ToA) measurements of traveling waves propagating from the fault-occurrence point to synchronized wide-area monitoring devices installed at strategically selected substations. The captured waveforms are processed together at the time of fault in order to identify the location of the fault under study. The overall performance of the developed technique is demonstrated using Alternative Transients Program (ATP) simulations of fault transients and postprocessing the faulted waveform data via discrete wavelet transform. The applicability of the algorithm is independent of the fault type and can readily be extended to transmission grids of any size.