Electrical Power and Energy Systems 53 (2013) 714–718

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Electrical Power and Energy Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijepes

Transmission lines fault location using transient signal spectrum

Mehmet Salih Mamisß ⇑, Müslüm Arkan, Cemal Kelesß
Inonu University, Engineering Faculty, Electrical & Electronics Eng. Dept., Malatya, Turkey

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper proposes a method for fault location on transmission lines, which is based on time to fre-
Received 22 June 2012 quency domain transformation of transient signals of the fault instant measured at one end. Fast Fourier
Received in revised form 26 May 2013 Transform (FFT) is used for time to frequency domain transformation and frequency of the first fault gen-
Accepted 29 May 2013
erated harmonic is utilised for determination of the fault location using the travelling wave theory of the
transmission line. The accuracy of the method has been tested using the simulations carried out in Alter-
native Transients Program (ATP/EMTP) with frequency-dependent distributed parameter transmission
Keywords:
line model by considering several cases and various types of faults, different values of fault resistance
Transmission lines
Fault location
and phase angle at fault instant. The method has good accuracy and the simulation results show that
Travelling waves the accuracy of the method is insensitive to the fault resistance and phase angle of the fault instant. Reac-
FFT tive elements may affect the resolution but, it can be removed by applying the correction procedure
proposed.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Power outages lead to loss of manpower and resources in indus-
trial plants; on the other hand reliability and continuity of electri-
cal energy has gained more importance in last decades due to
enhanced competition and limited resources. The most important
cause of disturbances in the power systems is unexpected failures,
and within them, short circuit faults are more common, which are
arisen due to lightning surges, usage of defective materials, impro-
per system operation, human error, overloading and aging. Besides
the economical losses in industry, a fault may cause loss of system
stability, failure of transformers, generators and transmission lines
and therefore, fast clearing of faults is greatly significant. First con-
dition for clearing a fault in a short time is to estimate the fault
location quickly and precisely. This subject gained more impor-
tance in last decades and advance in the computer technology al-
lows development of new algorithms for determination of fault
location. In recent years several methods have been proposed for
fault location in power systems, which may be classified into two
categories; the methods which employ electric quantities and the
methods based on the travelling wave theory. In some of the first
category methods, fault distance is estimated from the information
received from one end of the transmission line [1–4], usually by
using fundamental frequency voltages and currents measured at
one terminal [1,2] or by measuring impedance from measuring
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 422 3774816; fax: +90 422 3410046.
E-mail addresses: mehmet.mamis@inonu.edu.tr (M.S. Mamisß), muslum.arkan@
inonu.edu.tr (M. Arkan), cemal.keles@inonu.edu.tr (C. Kelesß).
terminal to the fault point [3,4]. However, some of these methods
require accurate modelling of both the faulted transmission line
and the power system in which the line is embedded and some
others cannot be used to locate symmetrical faults. In addition,
for short lines, the equivalent impedance variation can have a high-
er influence in method precision. Also unknown fault impedance
affects the accuracy and some methods are sensitive to errors in
the value of the local bus impedance. Due to these restrictions,
two- or multi-ended fault location techniques have been proposed
[5–8]. However, measurement from two ends is expensive and
synchronised sampling of the voltage and current data from two
ends of the line are usually required.
In the travelling wave based methods [9,10] on the other hand,
time-space analysis have been used for fault location. Short and
open circuit faults on transmission lines cause sudden changes in
the distribution of electric and magnetic energy which result trav-
elling waves. In order to determine the fault distance, the analysis
of wave time-position graphs are employed. In recent years, many
studies have been devoted to develop different methods based on
wavelet transform to determine the fault type and location [10,11].
Wavelet transform (WT) is a recently developed mathematical
tool, which is used to capture the dynamic characteristics of unsta-
ble signals using short data windows. Depending on the direction
in the protection of transmission lines, fault classification and fault
distance identification using wavelet transform was carried out by
separating the necessary information from the short circuit tran-
sient behaviour. The most important limitation of the existing
methods based on the wavelet transformation is the low degree
of accuracy in the prediction fault points near the busbar in gen-
eral. In addition, there are other techniques, which use elements

0142-0615/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2013.05.045
 M.S. Mamisß et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 53 (2013) 714–718 715

of artificial intelligence in the form of artificial neural networks 1 1 i

(ANN’s) [12,13] and support vector machine approach [14].
Using the theory of travelling waves, transient signal spectrum
can also be used for determination of fault distance. This method
has been applied for fault location estimation in single-phase
transmission lines and satisfactory results have been obtained
[15]. In this study, using modal transformations, the method is ex-
tended for three-phase transmission lines. Frequency spectrum
which is obtained by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of the transient
signals measured on one terminal of the transmission line is used
to detect the travel time of the fault generated wave, which makes
available the fault distance. The proposed method is applied to the
simulations carried out in Alternative Transients Program (ATP). A
two-terminal three phase system with distributed and frequency
dependent parameters is considered. The effects of phase angle,
fault resistance and source parameters are also investigated.
The organisation of the paper is as follows: After this introduc-
tory section, the theory of fault distance calculation using travel-
ling wave theory of the distributed parameter transmission line
is introduced in Section 2. In Section 3 the simulation model is gi-
ven. In Section 4 application results are introduced; the effect of
fault resistance, the affect of phase angle and the effect of source
inductance is investigated.
2. Fault distance calculation using travelling waves
Voltage and current phasors V and I at any point on the line
with per unit length series impedance z = r + jxl and shunt admit-
tance y = g + jxc are determined as [16]
V ¼ C 1 ecx þ C 2 ecx
f1 ¼ ; f2 ¼ ;    fi ¼ ð7Þ
2sf sf 2sf
Hence, if the wave speed and frequency of ith harmonic fi is known,
the fault distance can be found from the following equation:
iv
x ¼ v sf ¼ ð8Þ
2f i
The frequency of the fault related harmonics of the voltage and cur-
rent signals can be obtained by transforming transient signals into
frequency domain. FFT is used for this purpose.
3. Simulation model
In this study a 240 km 400 kV fully transposed three phase line
shown in Fig. 1 is considered in the computer simulations to verify
the accuracy of the proposed algorithm. Tower configuration of the
system is illustrated in Fig. 2 and physical parameters of the trans-
mission line are given in Table 1.
Marti frequency dependent transmission line model [17,18] is
used in ATP simulations. ATPDraw file of the test system is illus-
trated in Fig. 3. Sequence current and voltage waveforms obtained
by ATP simulation are transformed into frequency domain using
FFT. As the positive sequence inductance of overhead lines is prac-
tically constant, wave speed is not affected from the frequency
dependence of the line; hence the positive sequence voltage and
current data are used. The voltage and current waveforms in time
domain are transformed to modal quantities by using the following
ð1Þ transformation:

1 1 Im ¼ T1 Ip
I¼ C 1 ecx  C 2 ekx ð2Þ ð9Þ
z0 z0
Vm ¼ T1 Vp
where r, l, g and c are resistance, inductance, conductance and
capacitance of transmission line per unit p length, where subscript p and m denotes the phase and modal quantities,
pffiffiffiffiffi ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi respectively; and
c ¼ zy is the propagation constant, z0 ¼ z=y is the characteristic respectively. Modal transformation is not unique and for a trans-
impedance of the line. The constants C1 and C2 can be evaluated by posed three-phase transmission line the following transformation
using the boundary conditions at terminals of transmission line. matrix may be used:
Propagation constant of a transmission line can be written as 2 3 2 3
c = a + jb, where attenuation constant a measured nepers per unit 1 1 0 1 1 1
6 7 16 7
length and phase constant b radians per unit length. A wavelength T ¼ 41 1 5 and T1
0 ¼ 4 2 1 1 5 ð10Þ
k is the distance along a line between two points of a wave which
3
1 1 1 1 2 1
differ in phase by 360°, or 2p rad. If b is the phase shift in radians
per km, the wavelength in km is Positive sequence transmission line parameters at power frequency
2p are used to calculate the wave speed from the following equations
k¼ ð3Þ [19]:
b
The velocity of propagation of a wave in km per second is 2dm hm
lpos ¼ 107 ln H=m ð11Þ
v ¼ fk ð4Þ GMReq Dm

where f is frequency in Hz and k is wavelength in km. The velocity of

propagation in terms of line parameters can be simply obtained as 2pe0
cpos ¼ F=m ð12Þ
ln 2d m hm
r eq Dm
1
v  pffiffiffiffi ð5Þ
lc where hm is geometric mean height, dm is geometric mean distance,
Let sf is travel time from fault point to measuring point which has Dm is geometric mean distance to images, req is equivalent radius of
theoretical value calculated as sub-conductor and GMReq equivalent geometric mean radius of
x conductor.
sf ¼ ð6Þ
v
where x is the distance between the fault point to the measuring
point. Each 2s generates a period and it has been observed from
the simulation results that the frequencies of the voltage and cur-
rent harmonics generated after the fault are proportional to the tra-
vel time as Fig. 1. Two-terminal power network.
716 M.S. Mamisß et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 53 (2013) 714–718

are: l = 1.075 mH/km and c = 10.805 nF/km and positive sequence pffiffiffiffi
surge velocity calculated from these values is v  1= lc ¼
3
293:42  10 km/s. Source resistance is assumed to be 0.1 O and
source inductance is 1.0 mH. Transient current waveforms for
one period in time domain (20 ms) are used for frequency spec-
trum. Time domain signals are sampled at 25.6 kHz with 512 num-
bers of samples. To reduce FFT leakage, prior to FFT, sampled
voltage and current signals are windowed by using Hanning win-
dow. For 20 ms sampling time the FFT spectrum resolution is
50 Hz. This resolution may affect the accuracy of fault distance
estimation especially at low frequencies. To increase FFT frequency
resolution to 12.5 Hz, after windowing, 1536 zeros are appended to
the windowed sampled signal. It has been observed from the sim-
ulation results that a resolution of 12.5 Hz is adequate for the pro-
posed fault distance location technique. Other possible cause of
error is truncation error in numerical calculations.
In the voltage and current signals, source frequency is domi-
nated. This makes it difficult to visualise the fault related frequen-
cies. For the overhead transmission line considered, the lowest
frequency of the first fault related harmonic from (8), which is in-
versely proportional to the total line length, is approximately
Fig. 2. Tower configuration of 400-kV test systems.
611 Hz for a fault point at 240 km. This means that the frequency
components between 0-to-611 Hz are not related to fault. Because
of unavoidable of leakage effect in the spectrum instead of 0-to-
Table 1 611 Hz after FFT, masking is applied to the spectrum for removing
Data for 400 kV, 50 Hz, 240 km three-phase line. 0–400 Hz components and after extracting the fundamental fre-
Phase arrangement Horizontal tower configuration quency, transient frequency associated with fault can easily be
Phase conductors
specified.
Height at tower 24 m Fig. 4 shows the sending end voltages and currents signals
Height at midspan 12 m when three phase symmetrical fault occurs at 120 km at t = 0. To
Phase spacing 12 m make the voltage transients more noticeable, the source induc-
Number of bundle 2
tance is taken to be 10 mH. Fig. 5 shows the power spectrum den-
Radius of sub-conductor 1.521 cm
Spacing between sub-conductors 40 cm sity of the positive sequence voltage and current signals for the
Geometrical mean radius (GMR) 1.2253 cm same fault. As it can be seen from the figure, transient frequencies
DC resistance 0.0596 O/km are clearly apparent and more than one transient frequency asso-
Ground wires ciated with the fault exist in both spectrums. The measured first
Height at tower 33 m fault generated frequency in both spectrums is 1137.5 Hz, which
Height at midspan 20 m corresponds to x = v/(2f1) = 293.42  103/(2  1137.5) = 128.97 km
Spacing 15.2 m
and the fault distance is calculated with 3.74 percentage error. This
Radius 0.8 cm
DC resistance 0.3527 O/km

U U

Fig. 3. ATPDraw model of power system.

4. Applications and results

Four types of faults; single line-to-ground fault (SLG), line-to-

line fault (LL), double line-to-ground fault (LLG) and symmetrical
three-phase fault (LLL) are simulated in ATP by using frequency
dependent overhead line model to obtain fault transients. Positive Fig. 4. Transient voltage and current waveforms for a balanced three-phase fault at
sequence parameters at 50 Hz calculated from Eqs. (11) and (12) 120 km from the sending-end.
 M.S. Mamisß et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 53 (2013) 714–718 717

Table 3
Estimated fault distance and accuracy for LL, LLG and LLL for several fault locations.

Actual fault Measured 1st harmonic Estimated fault Percentage

distance (km) frequency (Hz) distance (km) error
40 3612.5 40.61 0.25
80 1825.0 80.39 0.16
120 1225.0 119.76 0.10
160 912.5 160.78 0.32
200 737.5 198.93 0.45

Table 4
Estimated fault distance and accuracy for LLL at 120 km for different values of fault
resistance.

Fault resistance (O) Estimated fault distance (km) Percentage error

0.1 119.76 0.10
1 119.76 0.10
5 119.76 0.10
10 119.76 0.10
Fig. 5. Spectrum of positive sequence transient voltage and current. 20 119.76 0.10
50 119.76 0.10

error is reduced to 0.12% by the correction algorithm described

next. It can also be observed from the frequency spectrum that
the other transient frequencies are multiple of the first fault gener- Table 5
ated transient frequency, which can also be used to calculate the Estimated fault distance and accuracy for LLL fault at 120 km for different phase
fault distance. angles.
The estimated fault distance by using the transient frequency of Phase angle in degree Estimated fault distance (km) Percentage error
the current signal and total percentage error for LG is given in Ta-
0 119.76 0.10
ble 2 and the estimated fault distance total percentage error for LL, 30 119.76 0.10
LLG and LLL faults are given in Table 3, respectively. The percent- 60 119.76 0.10
age error is calculated as: 90 119.76 0.10
120 119.76 0.10
150 119.76 0.10
jActual fault distance  Estimated fault distancej
Error% ¼  100
Line length
ð13Þ
the error for LLG and LL is high as 6.16%, which is 0.45% in the pro-
posed technique for the same type of faults.
As it can be seen from Table 2, for single line-to-ground fault error
Tables 4 and 5 show the effect of fault resistance and phase an-
increases as fault point is far from the measuring point. The maxi-
gle on the accuracy of fault distance for a fault at 120 km, respec-
mum error for LL, LLG and LLL is 0.45% which is reasonable. For
tively. As it can be seen from the tables, the fault resistance and
the same fault distance, the error in the case of LG fault is greater
phase angle do not affect the accuracy. Detailed analysis of current
than the error in other fault types, which is due to mutual effects.
spectrums carried out in this work have shown that different val-
However, fault distance can be estimated more accurately by pro-
ues of the fault resistance and phase angles do not affect the fault
cessing two end measurements, which is not required to be
generated harmonics frequency as well as the harmonics magni-
synchronised.
tude for all fault types. Although fault generated harmonics are
For all fault types the total error covers the error associated
clearly present for different phase angles, their magnitude may
with FFT and truncation error in the numerical calculations. Similar
get smaller around zero crossing point, which makes difficult the
results are also obtained in the case when voltage signals are pro-
detection process.
cessed. However, when the source impedance is small, the tran-
One limitation of the method is that reactive elements such as
sient voltage signals may not be noticeable, which may affect the
source inductance may affect the accuracy. But this restriction
accuracy.
can be overcome by distributing source inductance through the
When compared with other methods that employ transient sig-
line. The effect of source inductance on the accuracy of fault loca-
nals such as WT, estimations are more accurate especially for the
tion for a three phase fault is given in Table 6. As seen from the ta-
fault very near to the substation ends. In [11], WT was used and
ble error is very high. However, we have investigated that fault
distance can be estimated with a reasonable error by modifying
Table 2 distributed line inductance by including the delay effects of the
Estimated fault distance and accuracy for LG fault for several fault locations. source inductance. The modification is as follows: First, the fault
Actual fault Measured 1st harmonic Estimated fault Percentage distance x is taken to be the total of line length in distributing
distance (km) frequency (Hz) distance (km) error the source inductance on the line and an approximate fault dis-
40 3675.0 39.92 0.03 tance is estimated. Then, this estimated distance is used as new va-
80 1750.0 83.83 1.60 lue of the fault distance and modified value of l is calculated. Our
120 1162.5 126.20 2.58 practical investigation shows that two step improvements are ade-
160 862.5 170.10 4.21 quate for a reasonable error. The proposed improvement procedure
200 700.0 209.58 3.99
is described by the following steps:
718 M.S. Mamisß et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 53 (2013) 714–718

Table 6 insensitive to fault resistance and phase angle at fault instant.

Estimated fault distance and accuracy for LLL fault at 120 km for different values of When compared with other travelling wave based methods, fault
source inductance.
location can be estimated more accurately especially for the fault
Source inductance (mH) Estimated fault distance (km) Percentage error very near to the substation ends. It has been also shown that the
0.1 119.76 0.10 negative effect of source inductance on the accuracy of fault loca-
1.0 119.76 0.10 tion estimation can be almost eliminated by using the proposed
10 128.97 3.74 correction algorithm.
50 156.49 15.20

References

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Estimated fault distance and accuracy for a fault at 120 km for different values of
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0.1 119.67 0.14
1.0 118.84 0.48
10 120.28 0.12
50 120.01 0.01
Step 1: Set i = 1 and xi = total line length.
Step 2: Calculate line inductance li ¼ l þ 2Lxis . pffiffiffiffiffi
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