Fault Location Based on State Estimation in PMU Observable Systems

Accurate location of a fault on a line is extremely important to restore the line in the shortest time possible, which directly affects the operational cost and system reliability. This paper presents an accurate and computationally fast strategy for fault location based on well-known state estimation method. The proposed method employs PMU measurements recorded during the fault (before the circuit breakers open). Those measurements are used for determination of the fault currents flowing on the faulted line and locating the fault using Weighted Least Squares (WLS) estimator. The proposed method reduces the required number of measurements for the solution of the fault location problem by making use of the fast refresh rates of the PMUs. This work also presents comments on the selection of the initial values of the iterative fault location estimation problem. Simulation results are presented to validate the proposed method.