Transmission network fault location using sparse PMU measurements

This paper presents a new fault location method for transmission network using sparse (phasor measurement unit) PMU measurements. In this paper, a new concept of fault location factor is defined to reflect the location of the fault to have occurs. Then the matching based fault location method is presented. The fault location is estimated by matching measured factors with the calculated ones. And the genetic algorithm (GA) is introduced to find the optimal solution. Numerical case studies verify that the proposed fault-location method can accurately and quickly locate a fault point no matter where it occurs on the network.