Fault Location Algorithms in Transmission Grids

Sammanfattning: The rapid growth of the electric power system has in recent decades resulted in an increase of the number of transmission lines and total power outage in Norway. The challenge of a fast growing electrical grid has also resulted in huge increases of overhead lines and their total length. These lines are experiencing faults due to various reasons that cause major disruptions and operating costs of the transmission system operator (TSO). Thus, it’s important that the location of faults is either known or can be estimated with reasonably high accuracy. This allows the grid owner to save money and time for inspection and repair, as well as to provide a better service due to the possibility of faster restoration of power supply and avoiding blackouts.  Fault detection and classification on transmission lines are important tasks in order to protect the electrical power system. In recent years, the power system has become more complicated under competitive and deregulated environments and a fast fault location technique is needed to maintain security and supply in the grid. This thesis compares and evaluates different methods for classification of fault type and calculation of conventional one-side and two-side based fault location algorithms for distance to fault estimation.  Different algorithm has been implemented, tested and verified to create a greater understanding of determinants facts that affect distance to faults algorithm’s accuracy.  Implemented algorithm has been tested on the data generated from a number of simulations in Simulink for a verification process in implemented algorithms accuracy. Two types of fault cases have also been simulated and compared for known distance to fault estimation.