A Comparative Review of Fault Location/Identification Methods in Distribution Networks

Power failures are more frequent in Distribution Networks (DNs) compared to other sections of power system (generation and transmission). These failures are happened due to the occurrence of fault in the connected equipment or network. Consequently, the connected loads at consumer ends are affected until the service is restored. The time taken to restore the power or service back to the consumer may vary with the utilities based on the network complexity, design, availability of Fault Indicators (FI), etc. To improve the quality of restoring the service to the consumers, a faster service restoration technique needs to be adopted. The main challenge for the restoration process is the fault identification. Once the fault is identified, the service can be restored to the consumer within short time after proper isolation of the faulty section from the healthy portion of the network. In this paper, a comparative review of fault location/identification methods in DNs is carried out along with future research scopes in this area.