Improved fault location algorithm for radial distribution systems with discrete and continuous wavelet analysis

Abstract This paper presents a novel wavelet based approach for fault location using voltage transient waveforms in power distribution systems. The proposed method includes two main stages. Firstly, the approximate location of the fault or fault section is determined using a new algorithm with discrete wavelet transform. The difference between arriving times of transient components in different measurement units is used for this purpose. The accurate location of the fault is determined in the second stage. Depending on the determined fault section, the difference between arriving times of transient components in different measurement units or the frequency content of the voltage transients are used. The time difference and frequency content are calculated using discrete and continuous wavelet transform (DWT and CWT) respectively. The proposed technique is implemented on an unbalanced 34 bus distribution system with two distributed generation units which is simulated in ATP–EMTP. The comparison of the results of the proposed method with previous works verifies its better accuracy and more robustness to fault conditions including fault inception angle and fault resistance.