Fault location method applied to transmission lines of general configuration

• A fault location method applied to transmission lines of any topology is proposed.
• The method uses the grids’ admittance and impedance matrices.
• The search for the fault location is performed in each line’s section independently.
• Results show the robustness of the method even for high impedance faults.
• The method is capable to estimate the loads’ impedance.

Power quality is an important concern once automation is present in almost all industrial process. Since fault occurrences affects the power quality considerably, in this paper is proposed a new fault location method applied to transmission lines constituted of any configuration, as example double circuit, untransposed sections, and multiple derivations.In order to locate the fault, the method uses voltage and current phasors gathered from terminals with measures, however the method does not need these measures from all terminals.The proposed method is composed of three blocks to locate the fault, which are: Algorithm’s Main Control, Grid Scanning Process, and Objective Function’s Minimization Process.A large number of simulations were conducted and the results show the accuracy and efficiency of the method, even in cases of high impedance faults.