An efficient fault location algorithm for Shipboard Power Systems

This paper introduces a method to generalize the Active Impedance Estimation (AIE) fault location method for Shipboard Power Systems (SPS.) In the proposed method short-duration high-frequency voltage sources are employed at selected buses and voltage/current measurements are taken at specific shipboard power system busses and the effect of the applied sources are observed for the purpose of fault location. The goal is to obtain the minimum number of voltage sources and measurements that observe all the faults of interest that occur in the SPS. In contrast with the conventional AIE method, the proposed approach in not restricted to lateral branches and can be applied to interconnected SPSs. The fault location method does not interfere with the system´s normal operation due to the applied high frequency(s) and thus superposition is used in the analysis. This approach reduces the number of measurement devices for fault location in the SPS which results in significant cost reduction. The proposed method is then applied to a SPS in simulation using MATLAB/Simulink to show the effectiveness of the approach.