An Accurate Synchrophasor Based Fault Location Method for Emerging Distribution Systems

The accurate knowledge of fault location in distribution systems can aid in the repair process, expedite system restoration, and, thus, reduce outage duration. This letter presents a new method for locating a fault in distribution systems using synchrophasor measurements, which are often provided by phasor measurement units (PMUs) with high accuracy and a timestamp. Using voltage and current phasor measurements at substations and/or feeder heads obtained through suitable communication schemes, candidate fault locations are identified by iterating every possible line segment. The measurements from remote devices are used to eliminate all nonfaulted cases. This method works effectively for active and passive networks, radial and looped topologies, high impedance faults, and is not constrained to a certain pattern of PMU locations. The proposed method has been tested in a real distribution system. Results show that it can identify faults within 1% accuracy of the line length.