Characterization of event databases for locating faults in radial power systems

Abstract

In this paper, an approach for characterizing event databases composed of voltage and current signals measured at a distribution substation during faults is presented. Voltage and current features or descriptors obtained from such signals and knowledge based methods are proposed for locating faults in power distribution systems. As it is shown, this is a simple, efficient and economical option that takes advantage of all the information directly related to the fault location contained in the signal measured at the distribution substation. The characterization proposed here constitutes a fundamental step towards the development of knowledge based methods. These are mixed with model based methods to obtain efficient and fast hybrid fault location algorithms to be applied in power distribution systems.

Keywords

• Power quality
• signal characterization
• fault location
• model based methods
• knowledge based methods