Data Mining and Analysis of Tree-Caused Faults in Power Distribution Systems

The reliability and quality of power distribution systems are affected by different distribution faults. Trees are one of the major fault causes. In this paper, four different measures: actual measure, normalized measure, relative measure, and likelihood measure are used to data mine the Duke Energy Distribution Outage Database for meaningful data features and to analyze the characteristics of tree-caused distribution faults. This paper also applies statistical techniques to analyze tree-caused faults with respect to several selected influential factors. The results can be used to assist power distribution engineers to provide a more effective fault restoration system and design a more effective tree-fault prevention strategy