Development of a Novel Fault Indicator for Distribution Automation

The paper develops and implements a novel fault indicator for distribution automation to achieve significant and immediate improvement in reliability and hence service to the electricity customers. The proposed fault indicator is designed based on ZigBee communication. ZigBee has been designed to possess general-purpose protocol with low cost, low power consumption and self networking; and therefore, it is very suitable for constructing the communication network in distribution automation and therefore smart grids in the future. A fault detection and identification system is also designed to find out the fault location effectively and efficiently after a fault occurred. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed system.