Fault sensing for rapid restoration of tapped transmission lines

Faults on tapped transmission lines can result in significant outage times and lost revenue. Commonly used substation based fault locating solutions for tapped transmission lines can be problematic when trying to locate the specific line segment where the fault occurred. When fault location information is reported through the SCADA system, the system operator is better able to determine which line segment to isolate and minimize outage times. Information from each line tap, which provides an indicator of a fault and fault direction, will provide deterministic information to allow proper sectionalizing. This paper discusses innovative solutions designed to detect and provide fault information for a wide variety of fault conditions, at each sectionalized node, without expanding or building new substations. This will enable system operators to reduce outage times through intelligent switching.