Wide area travelling wave fault location in the transmission network

Traveling wave fault location method has been widely applied in the power system because it´s wide applicability and high accuracy. The field travelling wave fault location system uses the double ends method as major fault location principle, while the single end method is used as complimentary fault location means. For these two methods, they mainly concern the double ends of the faulty line and rarely consider the travelling wave data of the neighboring substations. With the rapid development of communication technology, we can use wide area travelling wave data for fault location. Based on the analysis of fault generated traveling waves´ propagation path and fault location error, this paper proposes the fault location strategy of wide area travelling wave fault location. It uses the shortest path containing the faulty line to get the precise location result and uses the other path location results to validate. The paper constructs the wide area traveling wave fault location algorithm, which uses the weighted graph to represent the power grid, and it uses Floyd-Warshall algorithm to get the shortest path containing the faulty line between the substations. Then uses the extended double ends method to compute the distance to fault, and determine the final result by using the wide area fault location strategy. The transmission network of Hubei province case shows that the proposed algorithm is effective. The algorithm uses wide area traveling wave data to improve the credibility of the location result, and it can improve the reliability of the traveling wave location system by finding the abnormal substation data.