Faults identification, location and characterization in electrical systems using an analytical model-based approach

The start of the electrical energy market has encouraged distributors to make new investments at distribution level so as to attain higher quality levels. The service continuity is one of the aspects of greater importance in the definition of the quality of the electrical energy. For this reason, the research in the field of fault diagnostic for distribution systems is spreading ever more. This paper presents a novel methodology to identify, locate and characterize the faulty events in the electrical distribution systems. The methodology can be extended to all types of faulty events and is applicable to reconfigurable systems. After having described the guidelines of the methodology, the Authors describe the architecture of the diagnostic control system implementing the analytic procedure. Finally the results of some relevant applications are reported.