A genetic based fault location algorithm for transmission lines

This paper presents a new method for on-line computation of fault location in transmission lines. The proposed method uses a digital set of short circuit current measurements for estimating fault location. These digital current samples are used to construct a set of over-determine system of equations. The estimation problem is then solved using genetic algorithms (GAs) optimization technique to find the fault distance. GAs are powerful optimization techniques based on natural selection and natural population genetics. The effects of GA parameters and operators, such as population size, crossover, mutation probabilities and fitness functions as well as the effects of sampling rate and sampling window size are studied. A practical case study is presented in this work to evaluate the proposed method. Results are reported and conclusions are drown