CIRED Workshop - Lisbon 29-30 May 2012
Paper 0267
A NOVEL PHASE TO PHASE FAULT LOCATION ALGORITHM FOR DISTRIBUTION
NETWORK WITH DISTRIBUTED GENERATION
Mehrdad Tarafdar Hagh Mir Mousa Hosseini
Faculty of Electrical and Computer Faculty of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University Of Tabriz Engineering, University Of Tabriz
Tabriz, Iran Tabriz, Iran
tarafdar@tabrizu.ac.ir mousa.hosseini85@ms.tabrizu.ac.ir
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the design and simulation of a method
for phase to phase fault location for distribution network
with distributed generation (DG). In the last years, fault
location on power distribution networks is receiving
especial attention due to the importance of a fast actuation
to clear the fault causes and the resulting reduce outage
time and significantly improve system reliability. This
paper presents the design and simulation of a method for
phase to phase fault location for distribution network with
distributed generation (DG). In this method, the
distribution network is divided into two parts and then with
voltage and current measurements at the substations of
main system supply and DG supply fault location is found.
Moreover, a new method is proposed for sections between
main substation and DG in order to reduce residual error.
Results show that the method can efficiently improve the
process of fault location and is well suited for identifying
phase to phase fault location in different fault resistances.
Also this method has greatly simplified the derivation of
complicated fault location equation especially in sections
before DG and therefore can superiorly enhance the fault
location process.
INTRODUCTION
In the last years, fault location on power distribution
networks is receiving especial attention due to the
importance of a fast actuation to clear the fault causes and
the resulting reduce outage time and significantly improve
system reliability. These approaches have been mainly
focused on locating faults in transmission lines because of its
importance and due to the time required to physically check
long lines is much larger than in distribution lines.
Traditional electric distribution systems are radial in nature,
and supplied through a main substation, therefore it is
simple to design a protection scheme for such networks. The
main goal in protection design in distribution systems is
detecting fault locations and further isolating it from the rest
of the system. Some methods have been suggested for
traditional distribution systems [1-5]. Recently, more
attention must be paid to applying distributed generation
Paper No 0267
Sanaz Asgarifar
Faculty of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University Of Tabriz
Tabriz, Iran
Sanaz.asgarifar@gmail.com
(DG) throughout electric distribution systems because, these
generation units may result in not having a radial
distribution network, which consequently raises some
problems such as losing coordination of protection devices.
In this way, DG has affects on the protection of distributed
systems. A fault locating in the distribution system is not an
easy job due to its high complexity and difficulty caused by
non homogeneity of line, fault resistance, load uncertainty,
and phase unbalance. However, the basic approach to
calculate the fault location using voltage and current
measurement is still the same as the transmission system
case that is to calculate the impedance using the fundamental
component [4] or harmonics [5]. This paper presents the
design and simulation of a method for phase-to-phase fault
location for distribution network with DG. In our method,
the distribution network is divided into two parts- before
DG and after DG- and then with voltage and current
measurements at the substations of main system supply and
DG supply line-to-line fault location is found. Moreover, we
have proposed a new method for section before DG in order
to reduce residual error. To the best knowledge of authors,
fault location in sections between main substation and DG
connected bus has not reported in pervious articles maybe
because of its complexity. Simulation results of numerically
solved are presented. The results approve feasibility of
applying our new algorithm in finding line-to-line fault
location. By introducing this new fault location algorithm,
the derivation of complicated fault location equation
especially in section before DG is simplified; therefore
implementation of method for real application is
conceivable.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
2.1. Unbalanced Three-phase model
Figure 1 shows a three-phase network between bus I and
J. A 3×3 matrix, which takes into self and mutual impedance,
can be expressed as Eq. (1).
Figure.1. Three -phase network
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 CIRED Workshop - Lisbon 29-30 May 2012
Paper 0267

 Z aa Z ab Z ac  V V  d  [ Zl  I1a  Zl  I  Zl  I1c ]  (1  d ) 
1b 2 b ba bb 1b bc
(4)
Z abc    Z ba Z bb Z bc

 ( Zlba  I 2 a  Zl bb  I 2 b  Zlbc  I 2c )
Z Z cb Z cc 
 ca  (1)
The relation between the bus voltages and branch current in Consider a line-to-line fault between phases (a) and (b) on
figure 1 can be expressed as Eq. (2). system as shown in figure3. The voltage equation is:
Va  V A   Z aa Z
ab
Z ac   I
Aa
 (2) (5)
V   V    Z V V  d [(Zlaa  Zl )  I  (Zl  Zl ) 
Z bb Z bc   I Bb  1a 1b ba 1a ab bb
 b   B   ba  
Vc  VC   Z ca Z cb Z cc   I Cc  I  (Zlac  Zl )  I1c ]  I  R
1b bc f f
We used this three-phase unbalanced model in our fault
location algorithm to identify phase-to-phase fault in From Eq.5 and 6 and eliminating fault current (If ) and fault
distribution network with DG. resistance (Rf), equation 7 is obtained.
(6)
V 2 aV  (1  d )  [(Zl aa  Zl )  I 2 a 
2.2. Fault location algorithm 2b ba
(Zl  Zl )  I  ( Zl ac  Zl )  I ]  I  R
ab bb 2b bc 2c f f

Consider a distribution network with distributed (V 1aV2a )  (V  V )  d  [(Zl aa  Zl )  ( I1a  I 2a ) 

2b 1b ba
generation as shown in figure 2. The local generation source (Zl  Zl )  ( I  I )  (Zl ac  Zl )  ( I  I )] 
ab bb 1b 2b bc 1c 2c
has connected to Kth bus and therefore network is divided [(Zl aa  Zl )  I 2a  (Zl  Zl )  I  ( Zlac  Zl )  I 2c ]
ba ab bb 2b bc
into two sections; one section before DG and another after (7)
DG. The approach proposed uses voltages and currents
measured at substations and by dividing network in two From Eq.7.the fault distance equation is obtained as Eq.8.
sections; distance of fault location has been obtained by two AA  CC (8)
d
methods. At the sections before DG, measured voltage and BB
current in substations are used and for sections that are
Where
located after DG, the network is being same as radial
network.
AA  ( Zl aa  Zl )  I 2 a  ( Zl  Zl ) I  ( Zl ac  Zl )  I 2c
ba ab bb 2b bc (9)
BB (Zlaa  Zl )  (I1a  I2a)  (Zl  Zl )  (I  I )  (Zlac  Zl ) (I1c  I2c)
ba ab bb 1b 2b bc (10)
CC  (V V 2 a )  (V 2 b  V 1 b )
1a (11)

The fault distance can be obtained from these equations (8) -

Figure.2. Distribution network with DG
2.3. Proposed fault location method for section of before
DG
Distribution network in sections after DG is as a radial
network; therefore the fault location algorithm is similar to
radial method by direct circuit analysis [11] but in sections
before DG, data in two sides of network is available. We
propose new fault location lemma for section before DG that
is presented in following for line-to-line fault location.
Figure 3 shows a three-phase network with line-to-line fault
in the distance d from substation number1. Voltage equation
for this system is given by Eq. 3 and 4.
(11). In these equations all parameters except d (Fault
distance) are given and fault distance can be calculated.
2.4. Voltage and current estimation
If the obtained fault distance (d) is larger than 1 or
negative, it means the fault is not in that section, but in the
following section. So another fault location process should
be performed for the next section using voltage and current
at the incoming node in substations for the next section.
Since the voltage and current measurements are assumed
available only at the substation, a way to estimate the
voltage and current at the incoming node is required and
described in this section.
Consider the short circuit had been occurred in figure 4
between bus Vk and V k+1. The voltage at bus Kth can be
obtained using Eq.12.

Figure.3.Three-phase network with line-to-line fault

V V  d  [ Zl aa  I  Zl  I  Zl ac  I ]  (1  d )  (3) Figure.4.The original branch with subside branches

1a 2a 1a ab 1b 1c
(Zl aa  I  Zl  I  Zl ac  I )
2a ab 2b 2c
V k  V k 1  Z k 1  I k 1
(12)

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 CIRED Workshop - Lisbon 29-30 May 2012
Paper 0267

Assuming the constant impedance load, the current flowing DG location is also investigated. An estimation error of fault
out to figure 4 can be calculated using Eq.13. location is calculated using Eq.18
(13) d calculated  d real
I Lk  1  V k 1  Y Lk 1 ` % Error   100 (18)
d total
Where ILk-1 is the load current vector of K-1th bus and Ylk is
the load admittance matrix at K-1th bus. The current Ik-1 at
Where dcalculated and dreal represented the calculated fault
Eq.13, is given as:
location distance and real fault location distance and dtotal
I k  I k  I Lk denotes the whole line length per unit.
 1  2  1
(14)
The voltage and current for k+1th bus has been obtained Figures 6 represent error verses fault location distance and
with Eq.15 fault impedance. The maximum error of 0.01% is observed
V  V  Z I for a 0.01 Ω fault resistance case while the maximum error
k  1 k  2 k k  1 (15)
of 0.25% is observed for a fault resistance of 50 Ω. It can be
According to equation 12 -15, voltages and currents for
seen from the figure that as the fault resistance increases, the
performing fault location algorithm in section before DG, is
estimation error also increases.
known. By using these data fault location distance (d) can be
obtained. If the obtained distance (d) is 0<d<1, it means
fault location is in that section and value of d shows the
distance of faulted section from incoming node. The
algorithm is run for all sections; therefore the number of
fault section is given. Distance of fault section from major
substation or distributed substation can be obtained because
length of all section is definite. Figure.6. Error value verse fault distance for phase-to-phase fault

SIMULATION RESULTS Distribution network in sections after DG is as a radial

network, but in sections before DG, data in two sides of
Our proposed fault location method has been simulated
network is available. For this section the proposed
using MATLAB on a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 PC and the
algorithm is used and as figure 6 shows, By using this
simulation results are presented in this section. In order to
method, estimation error is efficiently reduce compared to
show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm a network
section after DG.
in figure 5 is taken as a system that has 9 bus and single-
In order to show results for unbalanced and balanced
phase and three-phase laterals. Loads connected to bus 5, 6
networks a local generator in figure 5 is taken as a test
and 8 are single-phase and other loads are three-phase.
generator, which has transfer from bus 5 to bus 3 and
Lateral branches also considers as an equivalent loads for
simulation is performed for balanced and unbalanced
network. Main loads value in network figure 5 are:
1ph load=50+j15Ω,
networks with various fault distance and fault resistance.
3ph load=100+j25 Ω Figure 7 shows error value verse fault distance of network
with DG on bus 3 for balanced network. Figure 8 shows
And line impedance matrix and capacitance matrix is given by error value for unbalanced network.
equations 16 and 17
0.6550+ 1.4680i 0.1900+ 0.7000i 0.3000+ 0.9000i (16)
Zline  0.1900+ 0.7000i 0.6550+ 1.4680i 0.1900+ 0.7000i

0.3000+ 0.9000i 0.1900+ 0.7000i 0.6550+ 1.4680i


0.1166 0.0000 0.0000 (17)

C 1.0e - 007 0.0000 0.1166 0.0000
 
0.0000 0.0000 0.1166
F
Figure.7. Error value verse fault distance for phase-to-phase fault
on balanced network

Figure.5. Distribution network with distributed generation

Simulations has been carried out taking for fault location on

the network figure 5 and fault resistance value in the range Figure.8. Error value verse fault distance for phase-to-phase fault
of 0.01 Ω to 50 Ω, and various fault distances. The effect of on unbalanced network with DG on bus 3

Paper No 0267 Page 3 / 4


Table 1 illustrates comparison of maximum error of phase-
to-phase fault for balanced and unbalanced networks for
sections before and after DG. As it depicts by using our new
method for section before DG, the maximum error of phase-
to-phase fault is much less than those of locate after DG and
also thus accuracy of fault location process increased
efficiently
Table1. Error comparison between section before and after DG for
balanced and unbalanced networks
Section Before Section After DG
DG
Maximum error of 0.18% 0.23%
phase-to-phase fault
on balanced network
Maximum error of 0.20% 0.30%
phase-to-phase fault
on unbalanced
network
IV. CONCLUSION
A new phase-to-phase fault location algorithm is suggested
in this paper. The proposed algorithm overcomes the limits
of the conventional fault location algorithm based on the
sequence circuit analysis, which is the balanced system
requirement. Analyzing the results, it can be seen that for
phase-to-phase fault the best results are achieved when the
fault resistance value is small and the error is higher when
the resistance value increases. With regard to DG location, it
can be seen that for section before DG, maximum error for
line-to-line fault is significantly lower than section after DG.
The proposed algorithm is applicable to any power system,
especially useful for the unbalanced and balanced
distribution networks in real applications. The effects of
locating DG on lateral branches and variation or uncertainty
need to be investigated to enhance the practical application
of the algorithm.
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CIRED Workshop - Lisbon 29-30 May 2012
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