Fault classification on high voltage power lines using principal component analysis and feed-forward artificial neural networks

Overhead high voltage power transmission lines are affected by various external factors that result in faults and power outages. Most faults on overhead high voltage power transmission lines are due to factors such a lightning, fire, birds, pollution and other faults. The managing utility has to take the appropriate mitigating action in order to reduce the recurrence of line faults. This is possible if the exact cause of the fault is known. This paper examines the impact of lightning, fire and birds on the power line and proposes a simple artificial neural network based system to identify the exact cause of a transmission line failure.