1030
3, JUNE 2019
Multi-Terminal Nonhomogeneous Transmission Line
Fault Location Utilizing Synchronized Data
Yu-Ju Lee , Tzu-Chiao Lin , and Chih-Wen Liu, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—This paper presents an innovative fault location
method for multi-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission lines by
using synchronized voltage and current phasors acquired from
phasor measurement units or intelligent electronic devices. We
extend the previously published two-terminal and three-terminal
nonhomogeneous transmission line fault location techniques devel-
oped in our lab to multi-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission
lines. Specifically, a graph theory based indices and an optimal cal-
culation data window is applied to identify the faulty line branch
and to mitigate the undesirable influence caused by dc decay and
the arc phenomenon of circuit breaker. The high performance of
the proposed fault location method is validated by simulation re-
sults and real world utility fault data.
Index Terms—Fault location, phasor measurement units,
intelligent electronic device (IED), network topology.
I. INTRODUCTION
N POWER systems, transmission lines play a critical role to
I deliver power electricity from power plants to end users. In
recent years, transmission systems are expanding due to the de-
mand growing and installation of large-scale distributed energy
resources (DERs). Sometimes, it is hard to find an appropri-
ate location and a route for substations and transmission lines,
respectively. Hence, multi-terminal transmission lines with tap
points become a solution for planning engineers.
When a fault occurs on a transmission line, it leads to an
undesirable power interruption and severe financial losses for
utilities and end users. In real world utility cases, protection re-
lays are considered as the main protection mechanism, so they
are adopted to trip corresponding circuit breakers quickly with
a view to limiting the fault area. Additionally, several protection
relays have embedded fault location function to estimate a fault
position. However, the fault distance calculated by the relays
is usually inaccurate because of in-feed current and fault resis-
tance effects. Instead, artificial fault location techniques use the
Manuscript received July 20, 2018; revised November 2, 2018; accepted
December 13, 2018. Date of publication January 1, 2019; date of current
version May 22, 2019. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science
and Technology, Taiwan, under Grant MOST 107-3113-E-002-007. Paper
no. TPWRD-00839-2018. (Corresponding author: Tzu-Chiao Lin.)
Y. J. Lee and C. W. Liu are with the Department of Electrical En-
gineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan (e-mail:, yu-
julee1030@gmail.com.tw; liucw@ntu.edu.tw).
T. C. Lin is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taipei
University of Technology (TAIPEI TECH), Taipei 10608, Taiwan (e-mail:,
tclin@ntut.edu.tw).
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/TPWRD.2018.2890337
0885-8977 © 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 34, NO.
voltage and current data that are obtained from measurement
instruments to pinpoint the fault location with minor errors. An
accurate fault location technique can reduce the fault seeking
time and restoration time from a fault. Recently, related fault
location techniques have been collected and discussed compre-
hensively in [1].
After GPS-based PMUs or IEDs are introduced into power
systems, these time-synchronized phasor data or synchronized
waveform data provided by PMUs or IEDs, respectively have
been used to improve the performance of the power sys-
tem supervision and other applications including fault location
techniques.
In our previous works [2]–[8], the PMU-based fault location
techniques for two-terminal homogeneous/nonhomogeneous
transmission lines have been proposed. Homogeneous AC trans-
mission lines mean that the line impedance per unit length of
the entire transmission lines are identical. Whereas, nonhomo-
geneous AC transmission lines are transmission lines composed
of different line parameter sections, such as underground cables
in conjunction with overhead lines. These techniques form the
basis of this work. Lin et al. [9] used synchrophasor voltage and
current phasors measured from two terminals of three-terminal
transmission lines to calculate a fault position, but this tech-
nique can only be used on homogeneous transmission lines.
Lin et al. [10] proposed a complete fault location algorithm for
three-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission lines. However,
this technique cannot estimate the fault position on some real
world utility cases since the distortion of the fault current is se-
vere. Fortunately, the optimal calculation data window has been
proposed in Section III of the current work to deal with this
problem. Liu et al. [11] also aimed to develop a fault location
technique for N-terminal (N ≥ 3) transmission lines. Yet, the
nonhomogeneous line sections were not taken into account.
On the other side, some fault location techniques for two-
and three-terminal transmission lines were proposed based on
different theories. Lee et al. [12] proposed a numerical algo-
rithm for two-terminal fault location by considering positive-
and zero-sequence components; however, the long line model is
not taken into account. Izykowski et al. [13] adopted three-phase
currents of three terminals and one voltage which was measured
from the bus with the fault locator to derive the fault location.
Also, since the Newton-Raphson iteration operation is adopted
to converge the result, it causes higher computational burden.
Gopalakrishnan et al. [14] proposed an improved transmission
line model to increase the accuracy of the fault location tech-
nique, but it needs higher sampling rate. Dutta et al. [15] reduced
LEE et al.: MULTI-TERMINAL NONHOMOGENEOUS TRANSMISSION LINE FAULT LOCATION UTILIZING SYNCHRONIZED DATA 1031

the sampling rate from 20 kHz [14] to 1 kHz, and the detecting
time of fault location is less than 7 ms; however, this technique
can only be used on two-terminal transmission lines. Recently,
Zhang et al. [16] presented an interesting method to pinpoint a
fault position by observing the phase characteristics. Unfortu-
nately, it can only be applied to two-terminal nonhomogeneous
transmission lines.
Recently, some fault location techniques for multi-terminal
transmission lines have been reported in [17]–[25]. Liao et al.
[17], [18] used phasor data measured from one or two buses to Fig. 1. A non-hierarchical multi-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission line.
estimate the fault position. The two-end fault location algorithm
shows high performance for all fault types, but this algorithm
is restricted by the location of measurement devices; otherwise,
the one-end algorithm has higher calculation error for line-to-
line and three-phase faults. Kang et al. [19], [20] proposed two
fault location methods based on current and voltage phasors,
respectively. These two methods perform very high accuracy
and don’t require too much measurement devices to be deployed
on transmission networks, but high impedance faults were not
mentioned. Funabashi et al. [21] proposed two fault location
methods based on impedance relay type and current diversion ra-
Fig. 2. A multi-terminal hierarchical transmission line.
tio to deal with double-circuit multi-terminal transmission lines.
However, the three-phase and double line-to-ground faults were
not mentioned. Reference [22] adopted source impedance at all
terminals to identify the faulty line branch and the fault point
with various fault impedance and fault types. Yet, the iteration
process is required in the study, and it may cause heavy com-
putational burden. De Pereira et al. [23] used positive-sequence
and superimposed components derived from two terminals to
identify the fault position on the main line segment or tapped
lines on a multi-terminal transmission line. It is noteworthy that Fig. 3. One line diagram of a two-terminal line with a fault.
the fault types need to be known in advanced. Jiang et al. [24]
used current unbalance on every node as a faulty line branch
ing synchronized phasor data of voltage and current. Section II
indicator to distinguish whether a fault occurs on the main line
reviews the theory of the two-end fault location technique.
branch or tapped lines. Also, the fault point can be calculated
Section III describes the procedure of the proposed fault lo-
by solving a quadratic equation formed by pre-fault voltage,
cation method. Besides, the graph theory which is adopted to
unbalance current and bus admittance matrix. However, nonho-
express the topology of the transmission lines is also discussed
mogeneous transmission lines were not reported in their study.
in this section. Section IV shows the influence on the fault loca-
The works [10], [11], [25] extended two-terminal fault loca-
tion method, which is caused by DC decay and arc phenomenon
tion techniques proposed by [7] and [26] to solve multi-terminal
of CB, and then evaluates the accuracy under different fault-on
transmission line structures; nonetheless, these three algorithms
windows. The performance evaluations of simulations and real
cannot be applied to multi-terminal hierarchical transmission
world utility cases are presented in Section V. Last but not least,
lines.
Section VI shows the conclusion of our idea.
It is common for a multi-terminal transmission line to have
all tapped lines jointed to the main line branch directly. Hence,
there are no any junction points on tapped lines as shown in II. REVIEW OF THE TWO-TERMINAL FAULT
Fig. 1, where the main line is the transmission line between LOCATION TECHNIQUE
buses S1 and Sn. In this study, the structure of multi-terminal Consider a transposed two-terminal transmission line shown
hierarchical transmission lines is taken into account. A in Fig. 3 where synchronized voltage and current phasors are
multi-terminal hierarchical transmission line means that tapped provided by PMUs or IEDs that are installed at the buses S and R,
lines are extended not only from main line branch but also from individually. Here, the positive-sequence quantities are adopted
other tapped lines. This situation causes the multi-terminal because they can respond to all kinds of fault types when applied
transmission line to become a multi-layer structure as shown to many fault location theories [2]–[11], [26], [27].
in Fig. 2. Suppose that there is a fault located at point F with a distance
This paper presents an innovative fault location technique of x km away from the bus R. The positive-sequence voltage and
for multi-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission lines by us- current phasors at x km away from the bus R can be obtained

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1032 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 34, NO. 3, JUNE 2019

below [10]:
Vx = A cosh (x) + B sinh (x) (1)
1
Ix = [A sinh (x) + B cosh (x)] (2)
ZC
√ √
where Z C = Z /Y and  = Z Y denote the characteristic
impedance and propagation constant, respectively. Z and Y are
the positive-sequence impedance and admittance of a transmis-
sion line, individually.
Constant A and B can be obtained by the boundary condi-
tions of voltages and currents measured at the bus S and bus R, Fig. 4. A 6-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission line.
respectively; hence the voltage of (1) can be rewritten as:
Vx,R = VR cosh (x) + Z C I R sinh (x) (3) bus; hence, the synchronized phasor data of voltage and current
Vx,S = VS cosh [ (L − x)] − Z C I S sinh [ (L − x)] (4) can be obtained for all buses.
However, the configuration of the transmission line may be-
where the subscripts R and S shown in (3) and (4) denote the come hierarchical when the position of a junction points is
voltages at the point x that are derived from the two voltage located randomly. Therefore, the graph theory is an appropri-
and current phasor sets, (VS , I S ) and (VR , I R ), measured at the ate method to represent the topology for transmission systems.
sending end and the receiving end, respectively. For the proposed graph theory, we define two system topology
The length L is adopted as the reference per-unit length, and matrices B and J, to represent the connection relationships be-
the D is the per-unit fault location index. Thus, the exact fault tween buses and junction points, and among junction points,
location is defined as x = DL km away from the bus R, where respectively.
the bus R is the reference end. D can be calculated by equating
(3) and (4) [4], [26]: ⎡ ⎤
B11
ln (N /M) · · · B1(n−2)
⎢ B12 ⎥
D= (5) ⎢ · · · B2(n−2) ⎥
2L ⎢ ⎥
B = ⎢ B21 B22 ⎥ (8)
where ⎢ .. .. . . .. ⎥
⎣ . . . . ⎦
M = (VS + Z C I S ) e−L − (VR + Z C I R ) (6) Bn1 Bn2 · · · Bn(n−2)
N = (VR − Z C I R ) − (VS − Z C I S ) eL (7)
where
When the fault occurs between the bus S and R, the fault ⎧
location index D will converge within the window [0,1]. In ⎪
⎨ 1, i f the i th bus, Si , is connected to the jth
other words, the D does not converge if an external fault or no Bi j = junction point,P j , dir ectly.
fault occurs. ⎪
⎩ 0, other wise.
Based on this fact, the exact fault location can be obtained
as long as the faulty area is narrowed down to a line branch for
multi-terminal transmission lines. and
⎡ ⎤
III. THE PROPOSED METHOD J11 J12 · · · J1(n−2)
⎢ J21 J22 · · · J2(n−2) ⎥
⎢ ⎥
With an eye to using the two-terminal fault location technique J =⎢ .. .. .. . ⎥ (9)
effectively to locate a fault point on a multi-terminal nonhomo- ⎣ . . . .. ⎦
geneous transmission line, this study adopts 4 steps to narrow J(n−2)1 J(n−2)2 · · · J(n−2)(n−2)
the faulty area down to a faulty line section, and then figures
out the exact fault location. On the other hand, the influences where
of instrument transformers are also discussed at the end of this
⎧
section. The complete procedure of the proposed method is il- ⎨ 1, i f the i th junction point, Pi , is connected to
lustrated in Fig. 6 and is explained below: Ji j = the jth junction point,P j , dir ectly.
⎩
0, other wise.
A. Matrices Representation for Multi-Terminal
Nonhomogeneous Transmission Lines For the ease of illustration of the proposed method, we use
Consider a multi-terminal hierarchical nonhomogeneous a 6-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission line as an example,
transmission line with N buses and N-2 junction points as shown as shown in Fig. 4. Based on the graph theory mentioned above,
in Fig. 2. Assume that PMU or IED has been deployed on every this transmission network can be expressed by the matrices B

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LEE et al.: MULTI-TERMINAL NONHOMOGENEOUS TRANSMISSION LINE FAULT LOCATION UTILIZING SYNCHRONIZED DATA 1033

and J below:
⎡ ⎤
10 00
⎢1 0 0 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢0 0 1 0 ⎥
B=⎢⎢ ⎥ (10)
⎥
⎢0 0 1 0 ⎥
⎣0 0 0 1 ⎦
Fig. 5. Line branch between P1 and S1.
00 01
⎡ ⎤
0100
⎢1 0 1 1⎥ and current phasor sets for all junction points are obtained. The
J =⎢ ⎥
⎣0 1 0 0⎦ (11) calculation burden on the number of fault location indices can be
minimized apparently from n to one. The computation process
0100
of represented voltage and current phasor sets will be explained
in the following sections.
For junction point P1, it connects to S1, S2, and P2 directly.
In the matrix B, the entries B11 and B21 are thus filled with 1,
and the other entries of column 1 in matrix B are set to 0. In B. Derivation of the Represented Voltage and Current Sets for
the matrix J, the entries J12 and J21 show 1 because P1 is the Every Junction Point
neighbor junction of P2; in a similar manner, the other entries
For the multi-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission line
of column 1 and row 1 in matrix J are 0.
shown in Fig. 2, the connection condition like how many junc-
For junction point P2, It only connects to P1, P3 and P4.
tion points and/or buses are connected with every junction point
Hence, all entries of column 2 in matrix B show 0. In the matrix
can be categorized into three types:
J, the entries J12 , J32 and J42 are thus filled with 1.
Type A: A junction point connects to three junction points,
Furthermore, the number of transmission line sections for line
e.g., P2.
branches is taken into account in these two topology matrices;
Type B: A junction point connects to two junction points and
hence, the matrices B and J are rewritten below:
one bus, e.g., P3.
⎡ ⎤
30 00 Type C: A junction point connects to another junction point
⎢2 0 0 0⎥ and two buses, e.g., P1.
⎢ ⎥
⎢0 0 1 0 ⎥ According to these three types of connection conditions, the
B = ⎢⎢0 0 2 0 ⎥
⎥ (12) represented voltage at a junction point can be derived from
⎢ ⎥
⎣0 0 0 2 ⎦ any one of the three neighbor points if there is no fault on the
00 03 transmission line since the three calculated voltage values will
⎡ ⎤ remain the same under no fault condition.
0200 On the other hand, the current will flow toward to the fault
⎢2 0 3 3⎥
J = ⎢⎣0 3 0 0⎦
⎥ (13) side, so the other two calculated current values form the repre-
sented current at the junction point.
0300 To differentiate the calculated phasor sets of voltage and
For the nonhomogeneous line branch between bus S1 and current among the different junction points or buses, we
junction point P1 shown in Fig. 4, the line branch consists of have denoted them as (V Pn,I , I Pn,I ), (V Pn,I I , I Pn,I I ) and
three line sections with different impedance and length. Hence, (V Pn,I I I , I Pn,I I I ), respectively. The numerical naming order

the entry B11 of the matrix B  is written as 3. In the same manner, starts from the smallest to the largest number and from neighbor
there are also three line sections between junction points P2 and buses to neighbor junction points.
P3 shown in Fig. 4, so the entries J23 
and J32
of the matrix J  Hence for the point P1 shown in Fig. 4, the three calculated
are written as 3. phasor sets of voltage and current are marked as (V P1,I , I P1,I ),
Therefore, the connection relationships of a multi-terminal (V P1,I I , I P1,I I ), and (V P1,I I I , I P1,I I I ), which are respectively
nonhomogeneous transmission line and the number of the line derived from the buses S1, S2, and the point P2.
sections for every line branch can be expressed efficiently by In a similar manner, the calculated phasor sets of junction
using topology matrices. The main advantage of the graph theory point P2 are expressed as (V P2,I , I P2,I ), (V P2,I I , I P2,I I ), and
accomplished by the two matrices B  and J  is the represented (V P2,I I I , I P2,I I I ), which are obtained from P1, P3, and P4,
voltage and current phasor sets for all junction points can be individually.
derived orderly depending on their connectivity. On the other Using Fig. 5 as an example, the calculated phasor set can be
hand, n fault location indices where n is the number of buses derived below:
are required to identify the faulty line branch and to locate the
V P1,I V
fault point in our previous fault location techniques [10] and = Tl S1−3 · Tl S1−2 · Tl S1−1 S1
[11]. However, there is only one fault location index D needing I P1,I  3  I S1
 (14)
to be calculated in the proposed method because the faulty line VS1
= Tl S1−i
branch can be identified easily after the represented voltage i=1 I S1

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1034 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 34, NO. 3, JUNE 2019

where Tlm (m = S1−1 ∼ S1−3 now) is the transformation matrix TABLE I

THE TECHNIQUE OF SUSPECTED FAULTY AREA IDENTIFICATION
for the line section lm expressed in Fig. 4. The general form of
the matrix Tlm is given by:

    
cosh lm L lm −Z C,lm sinh lm L lm
Tlm = −1
    (15)
Z C,l
sinh lm L lm cosh lm L lm
m

 
where Z C, lm = Z lm /Ylm and lm = Z lm Ylm denote the char-
acteristic impedance and propagation constant of the transmis-
sion line section lm , respectively.
Based on (8) and (9), the three calculated phasor sets of
voltage and part of current for all of the junction points can be ∗
Pnm is the m th neighbor point of Pn .
obtained efficiently.
When there is no fault on the transmission line, the three
tion of β is listed below:
calculated voltage values, V pn,I , V pn,I I , and V pn,I I I , of every
 
junction point must remain the same. However, the calculated β Pn
I
= θVPn,I − θVPn,I I  (19)
voltage value that is obtained from the fault-existed side shows  
obvious difference from the other two that are obtained from the β Pn
II
= θVPn,I − θVPn,I I I  (20)
 
other non-faulted sides. Therefore, the suspected faulty area can β Pn
III
= θVPn,I I − θVPn,I I I  (21)
be identified by comparing these three absolute values of voltage
at every junction point. Furthermore, the non-suspected faulty On the other hand, considering the distortion factors, such as
area can be isolated only if there two sets of absolute values of the errors caused by measurement devices, parameter variations
voltage at every junction point are same. Briefly, adopting the of transmission lines, and sampling rate of PMUs, we define
P1 shown in Fig. 4 as an example, |V P1,I | equals |V P1,I I | if the two thresholds δ1 and δ2 to mitigate the bias caused by these
fault doesn’t exist in the S1 and S2 sides. undesirable errors. And the appropriate threshold values are
Here, we define the indices α to compare the percentage error obtained by considering different fault types and resistances in
between every combination of two calculated voltage sets for advance.
every junction point. It is defined as follows:
C. The Faulty Line Branch Identification
     According to the techniques mentioned above, the faulty side
 V
 Pn,I − VPn,I I  
α Pn
I
=  × 100% (16) of every junction point can be identified clearly, and the mea-
 V Pn,I   sured errors are mitigated within the threshold values.
     When a fault exists on the transmission line, there is only one
 V 
 Pn,I  − VPn,I I I   set of error indices smaller compared to thresholds for every
α Pn
II
=  × 100% (17)
 V Pn,I   junction point. Based on this feature, the identification of faulty
     area is summarized in Table I. The represented phasor set of
 V 
 Pn,I I  − VPn,I I I   every junction point is defined by average of voltages and sum
α Pn
III
=  × 100% (18)
 V Pn,I I   of currents from two calculated phasor sets that are derived from
healthy neighbor points. Additionally, if one junction point has
obtained its represented phasor set from the first two calculated
In general, the indices α that include the suspected faulty area phasor sets, the third calculated phasor set is not necessary to
show an apparent high percentage due to the large fault current be derived.
injection; hence there exists in one set of the indices α derived On the other hand, PMUs are only deployed on buses and all
from two neighbor points that locate in non-faulty area for all synchronized voltages and currents are provided by the PMUs.
junction points. So that, the percentage errors of the calculated Therefore, it is uncertain for all junction points to obtain more
voltage sets can be seen as a discrimination criterion. than one calculated voltage phasor directly because of its con-
However, those indices α that include the phasor sets derived nectivity, such as the feature of Type A and Type B. Besides,
from the suspected faulty area are decreasing dramatically un- there are at least two calculated voltage phasors required for a
der high-impedance faults. This situation causes the suspected junction point to identify the faulty side. In consistent to these,
faulty area unable to be identified precisely. Therefore, the angle this paper proposes an appropriate procedure to ensure the rep-
of the calculated voltage sets becomes a helpful auxiliary index resented phasor set for every junction point can be obtained
for enhancing the accuracy on faulty-area identification. As a orderly and efficiently. It can also help narrow down the faulty
result, we define another index β to evaluate the mismatched area to a line branch by the procedure of the represented phasor
values of the voltage angle at every junction point. The defini- set derived from every junction point.

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LEE et al.: MULTI-TERMINAL NONHOMOGENEOUS TRANSMISSION LINE FAULT LOCATION UTILIZING SYNCHRONIZED DATA 1035

Considering all synchronized voltages and currents provided

from PMUs, two calculated phasor sets of the Type C junction Vli ,R VR
= Tli−1 · Tli−2 · · · · · Tl2 · Tl1 (23)
points can be obtained firstly. If both of the error indices, α and Ili ,R IR
β, are respectively smaller than the threshold values, δ1 and δ2 ,     
cosh l j L l j −Z C,l j sinh l j L l j
the represented phasor set of the Type C junction points can be Tl j = −1
    (24)
obtained successfully. Conversely, the faulty side is located on Z C,l
sinh l j L l j cosh l j L l j
j
one side of the two neighbor buses for the Type C junction points,
and then the represented phasor sets of voltage and current need where j is the number of the line sections; l j and Z C,l j are the
to be derived until the third calculated phasor set is obtained. propagation constant and characteristic impedance, and L l j is
Based on Table I, two calculated phasor sets for the Type A the length of the jth line section, respectively.
and B junction points can be calculated when the two neighbor In accordance with the phasor sets at the both ends of ev-
points have had their represented phasor set individually and ery line section, the fault index D of every line section can be
within the criteria that both sides of two neighbor points are obtained by the following equations:
healthy.
   
By repeating the above steps, the represented phasor set of M = Vl j ,S + Z C,l j Il j ,S e−l j L l j − Vl j ,R − Z C,l j Il j ,R (25)
all junction points can be obtained gradually. Here, the biggest    
error index, α, appears on one junction point which is close to N = Vl j ,R + Z C,l j Il j ,R − Vl j ,S − Z C,l j Il j ,S el j L l j (26)
the fault point. At this moment, the exact faulty line branch can ln (N /M)
be figured out by using Table I when the three calculated phasor D= (27)
2l j L l j
sets of the fault-on junction point are obtained.
According to the above processes, the faulty area for a multi-
Because the fault index D is a per unit value of the length for
terminal nonhomogeneous transmission line can be simplified
every line section, we have to calculate and evaluate whether the
to an exact faulty line branch. Eventually, the two-terminal fault
D converges within the window [0, 1] from the line section 1 to
location technique can be used to derive the distance of the fault
m. When a fault index D converges within the window [0, 1] on
point from the junction point which is close to the fault point.
the line section l j , the l j is the faulty line section and the exact
When a fault occurs at a junction point, the error indices,
distance of the fault point from the fault-on junction point can
α and β, of all junction points are smaller than the threshold
also be obtained as follows:
values, δ1 and δ2 . Since this condition is the same as no-fault
situation shown in Table I, the sum of three calculated current

j−1
phasor values coming from three line branches jointed to every Distance = L ln + Dl j × L l j (km) (28)
junction point is further adopted to identify the fault-on junction n=1
point. According to the Kirchhoff’s current law (KCL), the sum
of three calculated current phasor values for a fault-on junction
point is not equal to the value of zero, which situation is cate- E. Field Considerations
gorized as case 5 of Table I. Based on this fact, the fault point In real world utility cases, the voltage and current phasors
can thus be located when it occurs at a junction point. of substations are measured by instrument transformers such
as capacitor voltage transformer (CVT) and current transformer
D. Locate the Exact Fault Point (CT), separately. Sometimes, the accuracy of measurement data
will be influenced because of CT saturation and CVT tran-
After the faulty line branch has been pointed out, the repre- sient. Fortunately, [3] and [5] have numerically shown that the
sented phasor sets at the both ends of the faulty line branch are impedance-based fault location technique will not be affected
adopted for fault location. Here, the junction point which has severely by CT saturation and CVT transient. For measurement
the biggest error index, α, is selected as the fault-on junction error, the field test that has been discussed in Section V shows
point, and its represented phasor set is denoted as VR and I R , that the results of the proposed fault location method are not
respectively; on the other hand, the represented phasor set of the affected significantly even though the ratio errors of instrument
opposite end on the faulty line branch is denoted as VS and I S . transformers exist in the real world utility cases. The proposed
It is noteworthy that the currents at the both ends flow toward fault location technique is also available under the system with
the fault point; therefore, these two ends can be seen as sending high distributed energy resources (DERs) penetration because
ends when the transformation matrix (24) is adopted. Assume this technique will not be affected by varied voltage and cur-
that there are m line sections on the faulty line branch, the num- rent and our idea is not relevant to bus type. It is noteworthy
bering of the line section from the fault-on junction point to that the only concern is harmonics provided by inverter-based
opposite end is marked as 1, 2, . . . , m − 1, m, respectively. Ac- DERs. Harmonics may affect the acquirement of fundamen-
cordingly, the phasor sets at the both ends of the i th line section tal waveform; hence adopting appropriate filtering techniques
are expressed as: (ex. Butterworth filter) is necessary to mitigate the waveform
distortion.
Vli ,S VS
= Tli+1 · Tli+2 · · · · · Tlm−1 · Tlm (22) The proposed fault location algorithm for the multi-terminal
Ili ,S IS nonhomogeneous transmission lines is summarized in Fig. 6.

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1036 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 34, NO. 3, JUNE 2019

Fig. 6. The proposed fault location technique for multi-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission lines.

IV. THE OPTIMAL CALCULATION DATA WINDOW FOR FAULT TABLE II

PARAMETERS OF THE 6-TERMINAL NONHOMOGENEOUS TRANSMISSION LINE
LOCATION CALCULATION TO MITIGATE INFLUENCE CAUSED BY
DC DECAY AND ARC PHENOMENON OF CB
In some fault location techniques, DC decay at the inception
of the fault and arc phenomenon of CB before the fault clearance
are ignored for getting steady-state fault current and reducing the
calculating burden. The assumption leads to these fault location
techniques present higher accuracy and good performance under
the simulation cases.
Both of these two factors influence the performance of fault
location techniques greatly. It is of general consensus that a
fault of a transmission line will be cleared within a few cycles
by protection devices; hence the data length that can be adopted
for fault location is limited, and these data include two unstable
parts that are caused by DC decay and arc phenomenon of CB.
Therefore, filtering out an optimal calculation data window is a
vital process for fault location techniques.
For observing the effect caused by these two factors, a
161-kV 60-Hz hierarchical non-homogeneous transmission sys-
tem shown in Fig. 4 is built by MATLAB/Simulink. This study
focuses on the fault location technique for N-terminal nonho-
mogeneous transmission lines; hence we assume all PMUs have
Note: 1. The superscripts + and 0 denote the positive- and zero-sequence components,
been deployed in the 6 buses, respectively. All parameters of the respectively.
transmission line model are listed in Table II. The fault location 2. The subscripts 1 to 6 shown in the source filed denote the bus number.
error is defined as:
|cal. location − act. location| TABLE III
err or (%) = × 100% (29) RESULT OF THE PROPOSED FAULT LOCATION TECHNIQUE CONSIDERING
length o f f ault y line branch
WITH/WITHOUT DC DECAY AND ARC PHENOMENON OF CB
where cal. location and act. location denote the calculation
and actual fault location results, respectively. By inspecting the
impact caused by DC decay and arc phenomenon of CB in
terms of accuracy of the proposed fault location technique, there
are 9 fault points individually assumed on every line branch
with 0.1  and different fault types. On the other hand, the
fault duration is set as 0.45 s (27 cycles) to ensure that the
fault current is able to converge toward steady state. Based on
this assumption, the influence caused by DC decay and arc
phenomenon can be observed clearly.
From Table III, it is obvious that the average accuracy of ∗
Results calculated with parts of DC decay and arc of CB
∗∗
the steady-state cases is higher about 54 times compared to the Results calculated with the steady-state fault current

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LEE et al.: MULTI-TERMINAL NONHOMOGENEOUS TRANSMISSION LINE FAULT LOCATION UTILIZING SYNCHRONIZED DATA 1037

TABLE IV TABLE V
ERRORS OF POTENTIAL FAULT-ON WINDOWS THE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF SIMULATION CASES
UNDER DIFFERENT FAULT CONDITIONS BY THE PROPOSED METHOD

cases considering DC decay and arc phenomenon. However, the

duration of fault in real world utility cases is about 3 to 5 cycles
shorter than the above assumption; the error of the case I will be
amplified because the influence is diluted when the data length
is longer.
Additionally, 6 potential fault-on windows are proposed to
obtain an appropriate window for higher calculation accuracy.
The 0.5 cycle (8.33 ms) is adopted as a unit window because of
the consideration of different sampling rates for PMUs. These
6 potential windows are expressed as the following:

Window 1: eliminate 1.5 cycles (25 ms) data before the fault
clearance;
Window 2: eliminate 1 cycle (16.7 ms) data since fault inception
and 1.5 cycles (25 ms) before the fault clearance;
Window 3: eliminate 1.5 cycles (25 ms) data from both inception TABLE VI
and clearance of the fault; THE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF THE OPTIMAL CALCULATION
Window 4: adopt 1.5 cycles (25 ms) data after 1 cycle (16.7 ms) DATA WINDOW UNDER REAL WORLD UTILITY CASES
of the fault inception;
Window 5: adopt 1.5 cycles (25 ms) data after 1.5 cycles (25 ms)
of the fault inception;
Window 6: adopt 1 cycle (16.7 ms) data after 1.5 cycles (25 ms)
of the fault inception.

Table IV shows the average error for every potential window

under various fault resistance and types on the different line
branches. The biggest error exists in Window 1 since the DC
decay is included. In addition, even though the DC decay is
almost ignored in the Window 4 and the Window 5, the error is
still higher than the value of 1. Therefore, the Window 2, the
Window 3, and the Window 6 try to avoid taking the portion of
the DC decay and the arc phenomenon into account.
In conclusion, the lowest average error is shown when the
Window 3 is adopted as the optimal calculation data window.
V. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
A. Simulation Results
To demonstrate the robustness of the proposed fault location
technique and the optimal calculation data window, 12 fault
cases with various fault resistances and fault types on different
line branches are listed in Table V.
According to the result, the exact faulty line branch can be
identified successfully and the fault point is also located pre-
cisely by using the optimal calculation data window. The result
shows that the proposed fault location technique can pinpoint
a fault point accurately regardless of fault resistance and fault
types for multi-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission lines.
B. Real World Utility Cases
Since IEDs have been deployed widely in transmission sys-
tems, these IEDs are capable of providing estimated fault loca-
tion results by the measured data. Moreover, these measured data
can also be used to verify the performance of the proposed cal-
culation data window under field cases. Although these phasor
sets are not synchronized among IEDs, a simple synchronization
technique proposed by Abe et al. [28] provides a preliminary
synchronization method. Consequently, we can use these after-
synchronized data to evaluate the performance of the proposed
fault location technique under field cases.
Table VI lists 10 field cases that occurred on the Taiwan
Power Company (Taipower) transmission lines. The average er-
rors (km) are 8.848km and 0.443 km estimated by the IEDs and
the proposed fault location method, respectively. Alternatively,
the average error (%) that is estimated by the IEDs is about 19

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1038
times higher than the optimal calculation data window. In con-
clusion, the optimal calculation data window for fault location
yields higher accuracy compared to the existing IEDs.
VI. CONCLUSION
A novel fault location technique for multi-terminal nonho-
mogeneous transmission lines is proposed in the current study.
By using the two topological matrices, the connection relation-
ship between buses and junction points on transmission lines
can be expressed correctly. Secondly, the faulty area can be nar-
rowed down to a two-terminal nonhomogeneous transmission
line by comparing the calculated voltage phasors at every junc-
tion point. Thirdly, the optimal calculation data window has also
been proved that it can enhance the accuracy of the proposed
fault location technique efficiently. The high performance of
the proposed fault location method is validated by simulation
results and real world utility fault data.
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Yu-Ju Lee was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He
received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering
in 2011 from Chung Yuan Christian University,
Taoyuan, Taiwan, where he is currently working to-
ward the Ph.D. degree at the Department of Electri-
cal Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei,
Taiwan.
His research interests are in smart grid, fault loca-
tion, and protection system.
Tzu-Chiao Lin was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He
received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from the National Taiwan University, Taipei, in 2012.
From 2005–2017, he was with the National Chung-
Shan Institute of Science and Technology, Taiwan and
the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA,
respectively. He is currently an Assistant Professor
of electrical engineering with the National Taipei
University of Technology (TAIPEI TECH), Taipei,
Taiwan. His research interests include regarding fault
location/protection issues for power networks, renew-
able energy, and hardware testbed for smart-grid applications.
Chih-Wen Liu (S’93–M’96–SM’02–F’13) was born
in Taiwan, in 1964. He received the B.S. degree in
electrical engineering from the National Taiwan Uni-
versity (NTU), Taipei, Taiwan, and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Cor-
nell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, in 1987, 1992,
and 1994, respectively. Since 1994, he has been with
NTU, where he is currently a Distinguished Professor
of electrical engineering. His main research interests
include application of computer technology to power
system monitoring, protection, and control.