Arcing fault detection via frequency measurement

More than 80% of all system faults, occur on the overhead lines of the transmission systems, are single phase to ground type faults and large majority of these faults are of a transient nature. Consequently, Single Pole Autoreclosers play an important role for ensuring the reliability of the systems. However, conventional Single Pole Autoreclosers has no intelligent decision making tool for identification type of faults. In this study, an Adaline based frequency measurement method is proposed to determine the type of fault. The proposed algorithm is also able to identify secondary arc extinction time for the transient faults. The most important feature of the proposed method is the usage of the system frequency as a gauge to identify whether a fault is transient or not. It is known that the system frequency is unique and not under any influence of the system parameters. As a result, the problem of determining a reliable threshold value for the chosen gauge is prevented. Effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated via using real data taken from an actual power system.