Fault-Induced Transient Detection Based on Real-Time Analysis of the Wavelet Coefficient Energy

In the few years, wavelet-based methodologies have been proposed as a good alternative for real-time fault detection. However, these methodologies usually fail to detect faults with overdamped transients and they are highly influenced by the choice of the mother wavelet, presenting time delay in the real-time analysis. By using the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) or the maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT), the wavelet coefficient energy has been also used for fault analysis and presents the same drawbacks of the wavelet coefficient analysis. However, this paper presents a novel wavelet-based methodology for real-time detection of fault-induced transients in transmission lines, where the wavelet coefficient energy takes into account the border effects of the sliding windows. As a consequence, the performance of the proposed energy analysis is not affected by the choice of the mother wavelet, presenting no time delay in real-time fault detection, and the fault detection is scarcely influenced to the fault inception angle, fault resistance, and fault location, even if in critical situations where there are no fault-induced transients. The performance of the proposed methodology was assessed by using actual and simulated data. Some records were reproduced to be analyzed in real time with a digital signal processor.