Experimental Investigations on Multi-end Fault Location System based on Current Traveling Waves

Traveling waves recorders (TWR) are used to accurately find the location of different faults in transmission networks. These recorders are installed at few substation buses where current traveling waves can be extracted. The recorded signals´ time delay of the initial wave is receded at each TWR. In this paper, the minimum travel time of the traveling wave has been calculated considering Dijkstra algorithm to select the nearest TWR to the faulted line. The wavelet transform is used to find the highest spectral energy of the frequency band of the traveling wave signals. Thus, the Wavelet Transform enhances the traveling wave fault location. The current transformers (CT) are modeled and experimentally verified to represent the traveling wave interaction with the CT. The secondary wiring from the CT secondary winding to TWR has also some effect on the measured traveling wave signal which motivates practical issues associated with measuring the arrival times. Correction factors are derived to monitor high frequency current traveling wave signals. Validation of fault location is examined by ATP/EMTP simulations for typical 400 kV power system faults.