Application of synchronised phasor measurements to wide-area fault diagnosis and location

This study introduces a novel approach to power system fault diagnosis by synchronised phasor measurements. Conventionally, faults are diagnosed through the status of protective relays and circuit breakers which are activated following a fault. However, the hidden failures of the protection system has itself often been among the main suspects of partial or widespread blackouts. This study proposes an alternative fault diagnosis approach independent of the function of the protection system. An analytical method is introduced for power system fault diagnosis using dispersed synchronised measurements and bus impedance matrix (Z_bus). Fault inception is first detected by local phasor measurement units (PMUs). Fault diagnosis is then carried out in a hierarchical manner so that first the faulted zone of the system is diagnosed, next the faulted line in the faulted zone is diagnosed and finally the fault point along the diagnosed line is located by gradient descent. The proposed method is applied to the WSCC 9-bus, where fault incidents on all of the transmission lines are examined. Moreover, the proposed method is successfully applied to the IEEE 118-bus test system consisting of 28 PMUs, which demonstrates successful fault diagnosis and location for a large-scale power system despite the limited coverage of PMUs.