Fault prevention by recognition and localization of self-extinguishing faults

Spontaneous faults in medium voltage grid are often preceded by a number of self-extinguishing faults. Therefore, it is useful to recognize and localize the self-extinguishing faults. The detected component could then be repaired or replaced in advance, to prevent the persistent fault This paper describes the self-extinguishing fault phenomena and the recognition methodology. The techniques to locate the faulted cable section are proposed, including the rough location by analyzing the measured data and the exact location by applying sophisticated detecting apparatus. In addition, several practical examples from a Dutch distribution system operator are presented.