A New Method of Single-Phase-to-Earth Fault Location for Rural MV Power Networks

A method of fault location is presented which is based on the traveling-wave scheme for rural MV power networks. There are two steps in this method, the first step is to determine the fault section, and the second is to find the fault point. When a single-phase-to-earth fault happened, injecting a narrow pulse signal with high voltage and detecting the wave signal returned back from the line, we analyze the wave signal by wavelet packets, then the fault section and the fault distance can be determined, and the fault point can be found. Based on the theoretical analysis, by calculating and analyzing the data obtained from lots of ATP-EMTP simulation, we think that the two-step method of fault location is practical for single-phase-to-earth fault in rural MV power networks.