IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 4, NO.
2, JUNE 2013
Wide-Area Traveling Wave Fault Location System
Based on IEC61850
Yu Chen, Dong Liu, Member, IEEE, and Bingyin Xu, Member, IEEE
Abstract—Existing traveling wave fault location systems employ
the double-end method and do not make use of data from neigh-
boring substations. If one of the data acquisition equipments at ei-
ther end of a line fails to capture the fault transient, no fault loca-
tion result can be obtained. A wide-area traveling wave fault loca-
tion (WA-TWFL) system, which makes use of traveling wave data
from various substations across the monitored network, is intro-
duced. The WA-TWFL algorithm first identifies the area of the
monitored network in which the source of the disturbance origi-
nated by analyzing the traveling wave propagation times using the
extended double end method. Then, the faulty line, and the distance
to fault, are determined using selected records from the identified
area of the disturbance. This approach provides fault location reli-
ability than the traditional TWFL algorithm. Traveling wave data
models based on IEC61850, which supports open communication
and interoperability between data acquisition equipment and the
master station of the WA-TWFL, are also presented in this paper.
The feasibility of the proposed algorithm is proved using traveling
wave data from an actual fault on a power grid in China.
Index Terms—Fault location, IEC61850, traveling wave, wide
area.
I. INTRODUCTION
T RAVELING WAVE FAULT LOCATION (TWFL)
method has been widely applied in power systems be-
cause of its wide applicability and high accuracy [1]–[3].
However, most existing TWFL systems employ the double-end
method and do not make use of the data from neighboring
substations. If one of the data acquisition equipments (DAE) at
either end of a line fails to capture the fault transient, it will fail
to provide a fault location result. With the rapid development
of traveling wave fault location technology, wide-area traveling
wave fault location is investigated. This makes use of traveling
wave data from various substations across the monitored net-
work and therefore has better reliability than the conventional
double-end method. Moreover, it also can reduce the number
of DAEs installed to save costs by optimizing the deployment
of DAEs [4], [5].
Manuscript received November 14, 2011; revised April 07, 2012 and July 10,
2012; accepted December 07, 2012. Date of publication January 04, 2013; date
of current version May 18, 2013. This work was supported by the National High-
tech R&D Program of China (863 Program with issue number 2012AA050803)
and Kehui Power Automation Co. Ltd. Paper no. TSG-00623-2011.
Y. Chen and D. Liu are with the Key Laboratory of Control of Power Trans-
mission and Conversion, Ministry of Education, (School of Electronic, Infor-
mation and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Shanghai
200240, China (e-mail: chenyukh1@hotmail.com; dongliu@sjtu.edu.cn).
B. Xu is with Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255049, China
(e-mail: xuby@china.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSG.2012.2233767
1949-3053/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE
1207
The traveling waves generated by a fault propagate towards
both substations at the ends of the faulty line, and then continue
to travel on to other substations via the transmission lines in the
network. Practical fault recordings have shown that fault-gen-
erated traveling waves can propagate over more than 1500 km
[6]. Therefore, the fault location can be determined and verified
using the arrival time of the traveling waves at these substations.
To record the fault transient reliably, traveling wave fault lo-
cation equipment is usually set to be more sensitive than relays
and so will record more than just fault transients.
Traveling wave fault location systems currently operating in
substations usually sample only the current traveling wave or
the voltage traveling wave, so it is impossible to get the direction
of the traveling wave and therefore the faulty line cannot be
identified.
The source of disturbances that do not trigger the relay, can
be determined using the recorded traveling wave data. These
disturbances are normally associated with defective insulators
which utilities can focus on replacing during routine mainte-
nance to avoid future problems.
WA-TWFL algorithms have been studied [7]–[10]. They first
determine the faulty line through the operation signal, then cal-
culate the accurate distance to fault by using the traveling wave
data of various substations across the monitored network. Ref-
erences [7]–[9] search for the shortest path between any two
substations and the fault point in the whole of the power net-
work and use the double-end method to get the fault distance for
each pair of substations. The location result is obtained using
weighted means based on the lengths of each line section. To
reduce the degree of computation, reference [10] proposed that
only data from substations to near to the faulted line be used to
get the location result. Because they need the protection oper-
ation signals to determine the faulty line, the above algorithms
can not be applied to disturbances that do not trigger the relay.
Some DAEs do not monitor the protection operation signals
and so a WA-TWFL algorithm that avoids their use need to be
developed.
TWFL equipments installed at substations may be supplied
by different manufacturers using different data models and in-
compatible communication protocols. Utilities need to resolve
this problem urgently. The IEC61850 standard aims to address
such a problem, but there is no traveling wave fault location
data model in the standard at present, and it therefore needs to
be extended.
A WA-TWFL system is introduced in this paper. A traveling
wave data model based on IEC61850 is presented to support
open communication and interoperability between data acquisi-
tion equipments and master stations. The WA-TWFL algorithm,
1208 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 4, NO. 2, JUNE 2013

which does not depend on protection operation signals, is pro-

posed to identify the faulty line and determine the distance to
fault.

II. WIDE-AREA TRAVELING WAVE FAULT LOCATION SYSTEM

The WA-TWFL system, as Fig. 1 shows, consists of the trav-
eling wave data acquisition devices installed at substations, the
master station that runs traveling wave analysis software de-
ployed in the control center, and the communication network.
The traveling wave data acquisition device records the trav-
eling wave transients in the power lines. It continuously sam-
ples the secondary outputs of a current transformer (CT) or a
voltage transformer (VT) and stores the sampled data in a cir-
cular memory buffer. When the unit is triggered, i.e., the devi-
ation of any input signals exceeded the preset threshold level,
the prefault buffered data and the transient data, within a preset
time frame, are transferred to nonvolatile memory. The acquired
data are then sent to the master station via the communication
network for further processing.
The master station runs traveling wave analysis software in
PCs typically using the Windows environment. It collects the
transient data acquired by the traveling wave data acquisition
devices installed at the substations and calculates the distance to
the source of the disturbance automatically. It also allows users
to view the transient waveforms and compute the distance to the
disturbance point by analyzing the reflections within the faulty
line section.
The master station consists of a communication server, a data-
base server, a web server, and a workstation. The communica-
tion server collects the recorded data from the traveling-wave
data acquisition devices installed at the substations, calculates
the distance to the disturbance point, and stores the record and
location results in the database server. The workstation is used
to configure and maintain the master station software. The web
server publishes the traveling wave fault location result and the
current status of devices in operation to the utility so that the
patrol crew can quickly locate the fault point and restore power.
III. SUBSTATION TRAVELING WAVE DATA MODELING
A. IEC61850 Data Model
IEC61850 is the data modeling and communication standard
for substation devices in smart grids. The physical equipment
is represented by logical devices and logical nodes. IEC 61850
uses a hierarchical model: a server can contain multiple logical
devices; a logical device contains multiple logical nodes; a log-
ical node contains multiple data objects; a data object has mul-
tiple data attributes. A server is used to represent the externally
visible behavior of a device; therefore, the server must provide
one or more service access points. In the communication net-
work, a server node is a function node which can provide data,
and also allow other function nodes to access its data.
B. Decomposition of TWFL Functions
To establish an intelligent electronic device (IED) object
model using IEC61850, the first step is to define, decompose,
and allocate the IED functions.
Fig. 1. Wide-area traveling wave fault location system.
Based on the requirement and features of the TWFL, the
application function is divided into 1) fault location function;
2) disturbance recording function; 3) input and output func-
tions, including inputs from protection relays and circuit breaker
condition and outputs indicating device status; and 4) interface
function, which includes setting, logging, and data storage.
C. Logical Node Modeling
According to the IEC61850 standard, application functions
are provided by the logical nodes. Because there is no definition
for the traveling wave fault location application, a new traveling
wave fault location logical node RTFL is presented. Here, R in-
dicates that this logical node belongs to the protection-related
function and TFL is an abbreviation of traveling wave fault loca-
tion. After the disturbance occurs on the line, the RTFL logical
node will calculate the distance to the source of the disturbance
according to the recorded initial traveling wave arrival time and
waveform. The RTFL logical node must support the double-end
method, and therefore must provide a means for the exchange
of the initial traveling wave arrival time with the remote substa-
tions. The other related logical node is described in Fig. 2.
Here, the IEC61850 logical nodes TCTR and TVTR repre-
sent the current transformer and voltage transformer; XCBR
is the corresponding circuit breaker; RDRE represents the dis-
turbance-recording function; RADR is the logical node for the
disturbance record analog channel, and provides disturbance-
recording control for the analog channel; GGIO obtains the cor-
responding line circuit breaker status and reports the device start
or abnormal status; IHMI at the station level is the operator inter-
face, which provides for adjusting settings, password changes,
and other functions; IARC provides for historical data archiving
and access. Finally, each physical device needs to have LPHD
and LLN0.
CHEN et al.: WIDE-AREA TRAVELING WAVE FAULT LOCATION SYSTEM BASED ON IEC61850
Fig. 2. Decomposition of TWFL functions.
TABLE I
LOGICAL NODE RTFL
For the new logical node RTFL, the data are described in
Table I. The data column is the data object name of the RTFL
and the description column defines the meaning of the corre-
sponding data. The M/O column indicates whether the data ob-
ject is mandatory or optional.
D. Traveling-Wave IED Modeling
After modeling the logical nodes, the TWFL IED model is
shown in Fig. 3.
TWFL IED is modeled as one server and one logical de-
vice. The logical device includes LLN0, LPHD, and the appli-
cation logical nodes. The RADR, TCTR, and TVTR have many
instances.
E. TWFL IED Service Mapping
As there is no real-time performance requirement for TWFL,
the IED communication services primarily use a client/server
mode. This supports association, reports and files transfer ser-
vices. All the relevant data in the logical node is contained in
its data set and access by the TWFL IED is achieved through a
client request for the data set.
IEC61850-81 defines the mapping of the abstract communi-
cation service interface (ACSI) to the manufacturing message
1209
Fig. 3. TWFL IED model.
specification (MMS). For the TWFL application, the TWFL
IED server is mapped to the virtual device (VMD) of MMS.
Logical devices are mapped to the domain of MMS with logical
node classes, data types, the report control block, and the log
control block all mapped to the named variable of MMS. The
data set class is mapped to the named variable list of MMS and
the file class to the MMS file object. The services are mapped
to the corresponding services of the MMS classes.
After the disturbance occurs, the TWFL IED can get the re-
mote substation traveling wave data provided it has a commu-
nication channel, and can then generate the TWFL report using
the double-end method. If there is no communication channel, it
will generate a disturbance report directly, without a double-end
result, which is then mapped to the MMS report. The master sta-
tion can then access the file service to get the data, especially the
waveforms, for further analysis.
IV. WIDE-AREA TRAVELING WAVE FAULT
LOCATION ALGORITHM
The master station can get the wide-area traveling wave data
by archiving the TWFL IED installed at substations. From the
logic node RTFL, the master station obtains the arrival time
of the disturbance initial traveling wave. By using the arrival
time set and the monitored network topology, the master station
can determinate the location of the disturbance point using the
WA-TWFL algorithm.
A. Fault Location Principle
1) Propagation of Traveling Wave: The disturbance trav-
eling wave is a traveling wave propagated along the transmis-
sion line whenever there is a disturbance. During the traveling
of the disturbance-traveling wave, it will experience reflection
and transmission wherever there is a junction, bus or other
impedance discontinuity where a portion of the traveling wave
will be reflected, while the remainder will travel through to the
nearby substations.
When an incident traveling wave travels from a dielectric
with wave impedance to a dielectric with wave impedance
, a reflected wave and transmitted wave are produced.
1210
Fig. 4. Transmission of substation bus traveling wave.
The magnitude of the reflection of the traveling wave is de-
fined by the ratio of the reflected voltage (or current) and the
incident voltage (or current) at the junction; this ratio is known
as the reflection coefficient. The reflection coefficient of the trav-
eling wave voltage is
(1)
While the transmission coefficient of the traveling wave is
represented by the ratio between the transmitted voltage (or cur-
rent) and the incident voltage (or current), the transmission co-
efficient of the traveling voltage and the traveling current has
the same value. The propagation coefficient is
(2)
In Fig. 4, there are 4 lines on the bus at Substation B; if we
assume all the lines have the same characteristic impedance and
line 1 is the disturbance line, the current incident wave of Line
1 , will produce a composite current in Line 1 at Substa-
tion B of which will be shared equally as current
traveling waves transmitted into Line 2 (and Lines 3 and 4) of
. The wave that transmits through to Line 2 will then
travel to its neighboring substation where, if there are also 4
lines connected to the bus, the waves transmitted will be in
amplitude. If the loss on the line is also considered, the transmis-
sion wave’s amplitude will be lower. For existing TWFL sys-
tems, the signal amplitude needs to exceed a preset threshold
to trigger the capture of the disturbance traveling wave. So al-
though the signal will be transmitted to many substations, it may
not be large enough to trigger a recording. For wide-area trav-
eling wave fault location, the data from the neighboring substa-
tions are essential. If the substation that first detects the traveling
wave is defined as grade one and the neighboring substations
as grades two and three, all the substations within these three
grades comprise a valid substation area for wide-area traveling
wave fault location.
2) Extended Double-End Fault Location Theory: The
double-end TWFL method tags the arrival time of the traveling
wave generated by the disturbance at both ends of the line.
The disturbance distance is then determined in terms of the
difference in the arrival times.
If a disturbance occurs at point F on Line BC, as Fig. 5 shows,
the initial wave will arrive at substations A, B, C and D, and the
arrival time is , , , and . The distance from point F to
substation B is
(3)
Here, is the velocity of the traveling wave and is the line
length.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 4, NO. 2, JUNE 2013
Fig. 5. Extended double-end disturbance location method.
Fig. 6. Disturbance area of power network.
Equation (3) is for the conventional double-end fault location.
The traveling wave will also travel to substations A and D. The
Line A-B-C-D can be regarded as one line, and the distance from
the point F to substation A can be computed by:
(4)
Similarly, using the traveling wave arrival time at substations
A and C or B and D, we can compute the distance to the distur-
bance point. Equation (4) is the basic calculation equation for
the WA-TWFL. By using this equation, the disturbance posi-
tion can be calculated for two non-neighboring substations.
3) Selection of the Disturbance Area: When a disturbance
occurs, the disturbance traveling wave will travel to the neigh-
boring substations and the nearest substation to the disturbance
point will detect the traveling wave first. The substation that first
detects the initial traveling wave is set as the central point and
the disturbance point is within an area of less than half of the
shortest electrical path between the central point and other sub-
stations. If there are many circuits between two substations, the
shortest one is called the shortest electrical path.
In Fig. 6 substations represented by “ ” have traveling wave
recording devices and substations with “ ” are without such de-
vices. If the disturbance point is near S1, then S1 is the one that
first detects the initial traveling wave, and the disturbance point
is in the dotted line area. That is, the disturbance point is within
1/2 of the shortest electrical path of S1 and substations S2 to S5.
4) Location of the Disturbance Point: If the disturbance
point is on the transmission line, as Fig. 6 shows, the dis-
turbance point location can be calculated by using the initial
traveling wave arrival times at S1 and S2. While using the
corresponding times for S1 and S3, S1 and S4 will give a value
that equals their respective path lengths, thereby confirming
that S1-S2 is the disturbance line.
If the disturbance point is located in a substation, all the sub-
station pairs, S1-S2, S1-S3, S1-S4, will give values equal to
their respective path lengths.
5) Path Selection for Parallel Circuits: Corridor access lim-
itations often necessitate the use of parallel circuits between
substations to meet increasing load demands. When a traveling
CHEN et al.: WIDE-AREA TRAVELING WAVE FAULT LOCATION SYSTEM BASED ON IEC61850
Fig. 7. Non-double-circuit line disturbance network.
Fig. 8. Double-circuit lines disturbance traveling wave.
wave propagates between substations, the parallel line may in-
terfere with the disturbance point location.
In Fig. 7, two neighboring substations, S1 and S2, have two
circuit lines, L1 and L2; either of the following two conditions
may take place when a disturbance occurs:
(a) The disturbance line is not between S1 and S2, i.e., the
disturbance line is neither L1 nor L2, as Fig. 7 shows.
Here, the initial disturbance traveling wave will transmit
from S1 to S2 through the shorter path of L1 and L2. So
the shortest electrical path of S1 to S2 is the shorter of L1
and L2.
(b) The disturbance line is between S1 and S2, i.e., the dis-
turbance line is L1 or L2. If L1 and L2 are of the same
length, the healthy line has little influence on the algo-
rithm. But if they are not of the same length, like Fig. 8
shows, where L1 is longer than L2, different disturbance
points will have different influences on the algorithm.
If L2 is the disturbance line, the initial traveling wave occur-
ring on L2 will arrive at S1 and S2 without being influenced by
L1. If L1 is the disturbance line, it will influence the double-end
traveling wave method.
As Fig. 8 shows, the length of L2 is , the length of L1 is .
If the disturbance occurred at the end of L1, within the area of
from S1, the initial traveling wave which travels to the left,
transmits to L2 through the bus of S1, and reaches S2 along L2
prior to the initial traveling wave that travels to the right along
L1. Using the initial traveling wave arrival times of S1 and S2,
the disturbance point will be calculated as S1. (The error is less
than ).
Normally, the parallel circuit lines are similar in length, with
a difference of less than 1 km in most cases, producing an error
which still meets the patrolling and inspection requirements of
the utilities.
B. Algorithm
The algorithm uses the substation that detects the traveling
wave first as the center to get the valid calculation area, and then
calculates the shortest electrical path and distance to the other
substations in the area. By using the initial traveling wave arrival
1211
time, the disturbance line is identified, and the disturbance point
is located. The algorithm is described as follows:
1) Preliminary Selection of Traveling Wave Arrival Time: A
traveling wave arrival time record set includes all arrival time
records that were recorded by the traveling wave devices in dif-
ferent substations caused by the same disturbance.
When a disturbance occurs, the master station will receive all
records, and determine which set the record received belongs to.
Then the algorithm will be applied to the selected record set.
The record set selection method compares the initial traveling
wave arrival time detected by the first substation with that from
other stations. If the arrival time difference is less than the preset
threshold value, the master station will regard these records as
belonging to the same set.
The preset threshold value depends on the maximum network
area width which can be set manually or dynamically. Dynamic
calculation uses a width first search algorithm of the network.
Then, the time difference is calculated using the maximum net-
work width divided by the traveling wave speed. The time dif-
ference multiplied by a coefficient gives the threshold value.
The coefficient represents the ratio of selection area width and
whole network width.
After this preliminary selection, the traveling wave arrival
time set may include some data that does not belong to the se-
lected disturbance. This needs to be selected after the distur-
bance line and the disturbance point have been determined. This
avoids the problem of multiple disturbances that occur simulta-
neously being mistaken for a single disturbance.
2) Selection of Valid Calculation Area of Traveling Wave:
A power network can consist of hundreds of substations and
transmission lines which would require a very large memory
and long computation time to compute the weighted adjacency
matrix directly. Using traveling wave propagation characteris-
tics, the substation that first detects the initial traveling wave is
nearest to the disturbance point, and the traveling wave ampli-
tudes becomes less as they pass through more substations. The
location of the disturbance point, can therefore be determined
by using data from the substation that first detects the traveling
wave and data from its nearby substations.
In large power networks, there may be simultaneous dis-
turbances at several locations under some extreme conditions,
such as thunderstorms or strong winds. For disturbances on
non-neighboring lines, the valid calculation areas can be iden-
tified and grouped based on the initial traveling wave arrival
times, and the algorithm used separately to determine each of
the disturbance points.
If the substation that first detects the traveling wave is defined
as grade one and its neighboring substations as grades two and
three, the substations within the three grades comprise a valid
substation area for the WA-TWFL. Using this method, the com-
plicated calculation required for a large power network can be
simplified to become a number of small networks for multiple
simultaneous disturbance points.
3) Shortest Path Search in the Valid Calculation Area: A
weighted graph is used to represent the valid
calculation area for wide area traveling wave fault location. The
graph G consists of three finite sets, V, E, and W. Each element
of V is called a vertex. The elements of E, called edges, are un-
ordered pairs of vertices. And each element of W is called an
1212 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 4, NO. 2, JUNE 2013

edge’s weight. For power grid wide-area traveling wave fault

location, V is the substation, E is the power line, and W is the
power line length. For a weighted graph, the shortest path dis-
tance is the sum of the weight of the edges.
A weighted graph usually represented by an adjacency ma-
trix. For a simple power grid as Fig. 7, the adjacency matrix A
is

Fig. 9. Disturbance line identification.

First, the initial value of the confidence coefficient is set to

0. Then the directly connected substations are found by using
the shortest path matrix —the matching calculation being
done by using (3) or (4). If the result equals the path distance, it
shows that the double-end substations have recorded the correct
Weighted adjacency matrix A is an order matrix, where traveling wave arrival time. The confidence coefficients of these
is the number of substations. The matrix elements represent two substations are incremented by 1.
the line length between substations, 0 is assigned to the diagonal All substations with confidence coefficients not equal to 0 are
elements representing the distance between the substation and considered to have the correct initial traveling wave arrival time.
itself and is used to represent the absence of a direct line 5) Disturbance Line Identification: After matching the cal-
between 2 substations. culation of the initial traveling wave arrival time in the valid
The Floyd–Warshall algorithm [15] is a commonly used calculation area, the disturbance line is identified according to
method for solving the all-pairs shortest path problem of a the following rules:
weighted graph. The algorithm compares all possible paths 1) If the result equals the shortest path distance of the pair
through the graph between each pair of vertices. First it gets the of substations, the traveling wave arrival time record is
weighted adjacency matrix of any vertex and , and correct, and the disturbance point is not on this path.
then finds all possible paths from to comparing them to get As Fig. 9 shows, the result calculated using S1 and S2
the shortest path distance matrix . After many iterations, equals the S1-S2 path length, so the recorded time of S1
the shortest path distance matrix can be obtained. and S2 is correct. Similarly, S4, S6, and S7 can be checked.
The steps are as follows: If the time of S4 is wrong, the result calculated using S4
Step 1) Create the weighted adjacency matrix A for the and S6 will not equal the S4-S6 path length.
power network and initialize the shortest path and 2) If the result does not equal the shortest path distance of the
distance matrix. The shortest path distance matrix paired substations, there are 3 possibilities:
is and the shortest path matrix a) If the path includes the substation that first detects
is , here. the initial traveling wave, then this path includes the
disturbance line.
b) If the result equals the distance of any substation on
this path, the initial traveling wave is from the other
lines of this substation.
c) The recorded initial traveling wave arrival time is in-
correct.
Step 2) Compute the iterative matrix and the Using the above rule, the recorded traveling wave arrival time
shortest path matrix , here is checked and confidence in the result can be increased using
verified substation data.
Disturbance line identification steps are as follows:
Step 1: find all the paths from the substation that first detects
the initial traveling wave to its neighboring substations.
Correspondingly, if , then Step 2: use (3) or (4) to do matching calculations according
update the shortest path matrix , that is to the path saved. If the result equals the path length, it is not
, which shows the path the disturbance path; if the result is less than the path length,
from to becomes shorter after it goes through this path is the disturbance path and the result is the distance
. Else, . to the disturbance point; if all the results are equal to the corre-
Step 3) If , iteration finished. sponding path length, the disturbance is at the central substation.
At this stage the shortest path and the distance of all-pairs The algorithm flow chart is shown in Fig. 10.
processes are complete.
4) Initial Traveling Wave Arrival Time Check: Use and V. CASE STUDY
to check the initial arrival time of traveling waves at the This case is from Hubei province, China, and is a 220kV
substations. power grid where 61 substations have traveling wave data ac-
CHEN et al.: WIDE-AREA TRAVELING WAVE FAULT LOCATION SYSTEM BASED ON IEC61850 1213

the datum time of substation S1. Because there was no recording

device installed in substation S6, no arrival time recorded.
The weighted adjacency matrix of the disturbance area is:

The initial distance matrix , and the initial path

matrix is

The shortest path distance matrix using the Floyd-Warshall

algorithm is

Fig. 10. Algorithm flow chart.

TABLE II
ARRIVAL TIME OF INITIAL TRAVELING WAVE
The corresponding shortest path matrix is

quisition devices installed, and a total of 137 lines are moni-

Here, shows that the substations are connected directly. The
tored. All the substations communicate to the master station via
master station uses (3) to determine the substations connected
a comprehensive data network. The wide-area traveling wave
directly, and the line length can be obtained from the shortest
master station was put into operation in October 2008.
path matrix D; the time recorded is given in Table II. The matrix
One disturbance occurred at 05:24:09 on March 27, 2009,
after the calculation is R,
on the Chatang line, i.e. the line between S1 and S2 shown
in Fig. 11. to simplify the representation, only the network
topology near the disturbance line is shown.
After the disturbance occurred, the master station collected
all the substation trigger records and did the preliminary selec-
tion. Then taking the Chaanling substation that detected the ini-
tial traveling wave as reference, the master station calculated
the time differences of the other substations with this reference.
If the time difference was less than the preset value, it was
saved—in this case the preset value was 2 ms. In this matrix, the element
Then the valid calculation area was searched from the source,
Chaanling substation; the searching result is shown in Fig. 11.
The arrival times of the initial traveling wave following the
disturbance is given in Table II. The time below is references to Here, i and j are the substation identification numbers.
1214
Fig. 11. Network topology of the disturbance area.
Next the confidence coefficient is calculated, with the error
limit set at 1 km. The confidence coefficient after the calculation
is:
The confidence coefficient is larger than 0, and shows that the
initial traveling wave arrival time is believable.
Because the substation that first detected the initial traveling
wave (Chaanling station) is numbered as S1, the disturbance line
can be identified from the first column of matrix R. According
to the rule if the result equals the path length, it is not the distur-
bance line; however, if the result is less than the path length, it
is the disturbance line, the line S1-S2 is determined as the dis-
turbance line, with the disturbance point at 7.64 km from S1.
NOTE: If a substation that is directly connected to S1 has no
traveling-wave fault location device, the next grade of substa-
tion will be searched for the calculation.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
An extended logical node (RTFL) is proposed as an extension
to the IEC61850 standard, The TWFL IED application function
is provided using the RTFL and other related logic nodes. The
master station of WA-TWFL obtains the wide-area traveling
wave data by archiving the TWFL IED services and uses the
WA-TWFL algorithm to determine the faulty line and the dis-
tance to fault. The WA-TWFL algorithm makes use of the trav-
eling-wave data of various substations across the monitored net-
work and therefore has better reliability than the conventional
double-end method.
Compared with the other multi-end methods [7]–[10], the
proposed method uses the concept of valid disturbance areas,
so the whole power network can be reduced to a number of
small networks for locating multiple disturbance points simul-
taneously. The proposed method uses only traveling-wave data,
and does not require information from protection relays and so
can be used not only to locate faults that cause replay operations,
but also the location of incipient faults which only produce small
disturbances. By analyzing the disturbance-traveling wave, util-
ities can focus on the weak points during routine maintenance
to avoid problems, and thereby increase the reliability of power
supply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 4, NO. 2, JUNE 2013
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CHEN et al.: WIDE-AREA TRAVELING WAVE FAULT LOCATION SYSTEM BASED ON IEC61850 1215

Yu Chen was born in 1974. He received the Bach-
elor degree from Xi’an Jiao Tong University, Xi’an,
China in 1996, and the Master degree from Tsinghua
University, China, in 2003. Now he is a doctoral can-
didate in the Key Laboratory of Control of Power
Transmission and Conversion, Ministry of Education
(School of Electronic, Information and Electrical En-
gineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University), China.
His research interests include protection and con-
trol in power systems.
Bingyin Xu (M’95) was born in 1961. He received
the Ph.D. degree from Xi’an Jiao Tong University,
China, in 1991. He studied in the City University
London, UK, from October 1988 to October 1990,
as part of a split-Ph.D. training program.
He is now Chairman of the board of Kehui Power
Automation Co. Ltd., China, and a registered Pro-
fessor at Shandong University of Technology. His re-
search interests are fault location and monitoring of
power networks and distribution automation.

Dong Liu (M’02) was born in 1968. He received the

Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Southeast
University, China, in 1997.
He is now a Professor at the Key Laboratory of
Control of Power Transmission and Conversion,
Ministry of Education (School of Electronic, In-
formation and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai
Jiao Tong University), China. His research interests
include smart grid and cyber-physical systems.