2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection

Fault location technology for high-voltage overhead lines combined with

underground power cables based on travelling wave principle
CHEN Ping*, WANG Kuixin
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255049, China

Abstract: For the 35 kV and above high-voltage overhead lines combined with underground power cables, an accurate fault
locating scheme is presented based on double-ended travelling wave principle. Firstly, the fault section is determined on line
by comparing the time difference between the arrival time of the fault induced initial travelling wave detected at two ends of
the combined line with a setting value. Then, according to the different fault section, the corresponding fault location algo-
rithms are derived. In order to test the validity of the presented fault locating scheme, a locating system is developed based on
double-ended travelling wave principle for an actual combined line. In the system, one fault locator is installed at each terminal
of the combined line and synchronized by a GPS based power system synchronous clock. The two fault locators can commu-
nicate with each other through a 2M multiplexing optical-fiber channel. Actual operation experience shows that the presented
fault locating technique for HV combined lines based on double-ended travelling wave principle is feasible.

Keywords: fault location, combined lines, travelling waves, synchronization, Global Positioning System

1 Introduction double-ended travelling wave principle for high-voltage

overhead lines combined with underground power cables is
Accurate fault location for electric power lines is critical to presented, and the corresponding fault locating system is
improve system availability by reducing restoration time. also developed.
For pure overhead lines, manifold on-line fault location
methods have been presented, which can be classified into
2 Basic principle of combined line fault location
two categories, i.e. impedance method and travelling wave
using travelling waves
method.
The traveling wave fault location method used for pure
overhead lines has been the concern of relay protection A fault on a combined line generates voltage and current
professionals [1], owing to its advantages of high location surges travelling towards two terminals of the line, as
precision and wide application range, etc. Since 1990s, with shown in Figure 1.
the developments of modern micro-electronics, communi-
cation and digital signal processing techniques, the traveling
wave based fault location techniques have been endowed
with new vitality [2], and get more and more on-line appli-
cations on overhead transmission lines [3–7]. The practical
operation experiences show that the location error of mod-
ern traveling wave based fault location systems for AC
transmission lines could be within ±200 m [8, 9].
With the rapid development of urban power grid, the
high-voltage underground power cables are becoming more
and more common. As a result, a large amount of HV over-
head lines combined with underground power cables appear
in HV power grid with 35 kV and above voltage level. Typ-
Figure 1 Lattice diagram for propagation of fault induced traveling
ically, it is more difficult to search fault on combined lines waves in a simple combined line.
than that on pure overhead lines. It is obvious that there will
be much great realistically significant to develop fault loca-
tion technology for combined lines energetically. Define 'TP and 't MN as follows:
In this paper, an accurate fault locating scheme based on

*Corresponding author (e-mail: pingchen1969@263.net) APAP2011 www.apap2011.org

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978-1-4244-9621-1/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE


 2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection

LC LO 3 Key techniques of combined line fault loca-

'TP  (1) tion using travelling waves
vC vO
A. Induction of Travelling Wave Signals
't MN tM  t N (2)

where LC and vC are the cable section length and the For a long time people assumed that conventional vol-
tage and current transformers which are designed for mea-
velocity of traveling waves in the cable respectively, LO suring power frequency components could not reproduce
and vO are the overhead line section length and the veloc- high frequency travelling waves effectively. A specially
designed voltage coupler was employed in previously
ity of traveling waves in the overhead line, t M and t N available travelling wave system. It requires modification of
are the absolute arrival times of the fault induced initial tune circuit of power line carrier (PLC), and is inconvenient
surges measured at terminal M and N respectively. and expensive. Some designs proposed application of opti-
The fault section can be determined on line by comparing cal transformers. It is not technically and economically
the time difference 't MN with the setting value 'TP practical to install additional optical transformers to existing
according to the following logic: primary systems.
Extensive simulation and test results show that capacitor
1) If 't MN 'TP , then it is derived that the fault is
voltage transformer (CVT) can not transform transient sig-
just the connnetion point P; nal effectively, while electromagnetic voltage transformer
2) If 't MN  'TP , then it is derived that the fault must (PT) and current transformer (TA) can reproduce current
be inside the underground cable section MP; transient with surprisingly fast risetime. It has been proved
by large amount of fault recordings that better than 300 me-
3) If 't MN ! 'TP , then it is derived that the fault must
ters fault location accuracy can be achieved based on sec-
be inside the overhead line section PN. ondary output of TA and PT.
Once the fault section is dermined for the combined line Using conventional TA and PT’s outputs, the travelling
MN, the accurate fault position can then be calculated. wave based fault locating system for HV combined lines
If the fault section is underground cable section MP, a can be easily wired into secondary circuit like conventional
equation can be derived as follows: protection equipments. This scheme is more cost effective
DMF L  DMF LO and acceptable to field application.
tM  t N ( C  ) (3)
vC vC vO
B. High Speed Data Acquisiton
Based on equation (3), the distance from terminal M to
fault point F can be expressed as: Surges from fault are detected by a simple triggering
1 L L circuit in previously available fault locators based on trav-
DMF vC [( C  O )  (t M  t N )] (4)
2 vC vO eling wave principles. There usually exists significant de-
tection delay to its actual arrival time since it may takes
and the distance from terminal N to fault point F can be
many microseconds for an actual surge to rise to a preset
expressed as:
threshold. Being subject to influence of noise signals, such
DNF ( LC  LO )  DMF (5) as lightings, this detection method is not reliable.
If the fault section is overhead line section PN, a equa- Using modern microelectronic techniques transient tra-
tion can be derived as follows: velling waves can be digitally recorded at very high sam-
LC LO  D NF D pling rate. The recorded transients then can be processed
tM  tN (  )  NF (6) using sophisticated digital signal processing techniques,
vC vO vO
such as correlation, wavelet transform. This makes surge
Based on equation (6), the distance from terminal N to detection more accurate and reliable.
fault point F can be expressed as: To get better than 500 meters distance calculation resolu-
1 L L tion, data acquisition sampling frequency should not be less
D NF vO [( C  O )  (t M  t N )] (7) than 500 kHz. Such high speed data acquisition could not be
2 v C vO
accomplished by normal data acquisition technique, which
and the distance from terminal M to fault point F can be control signal sampling, converting, reading and storing
expressed as: processes using a microprocessor. A special data acquisition
DMF ( LC  LO )  D NF (8) circuit in which all control signals are generated by a hard
logical circuit is designed. It continuously monitors and
samples input signal, and stores data in a preset time inter-
val when triggered by a transient. The recorded transient


 2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection

data are then transferred to central processing unit (CPU) 5 Operation experience of the developed fault
for further storing and processing. locating system
C. Precise Time Synchronization In March 2010, the developed fault locating system for
combined lines was installed in Yantai Power Supply Com-
The fault location method for HV combined lines is pany, Shandong, China, monitoring the combined line be-
based on double-ended travelling wave principle, so it re- tween Fushan substaion and Songjiang substaion. The pri-
quires equipments at both ends have better than 3 microse- mary connection diagram is shown in Figure 3.
conds time synchronization accuracy to get better than 500
meters fault location accuracy. For a long time, there was no
public source providing such high time synchronization
accuracy. It is obviously expensive and impractical to set up
a dedicated synchronization system in power network.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) can provide better
than 1 microsecond time synchronization accuracy, and is
open to public uses. Availability of GPS technique promoted
development of modern travelling wave system. Time syn-
chronization of the field equipments are obtained by com-
bining the serial time of day message and 1 pulse per
second (1pps) strobe from a GPS based power system syn-
chronous clock.

D. Remote Communication
The presented travelling wave based fault locating
scheme for HV combined lines needs a means to exchange
the two terminals’ measurements. It must be “on line” and
therefore can use dedicated or multiplexing optical-fiber
(2M) communication channel.
4 Travelling wave based fault locating System
for HV combined lines
The structure of the developed travelling wave based fault
locating system for a high voltage combined line is shown
in Figure 2.
Figure 3 Primary connection diagram for the combined line between
Fushan and Songjiang.
Fushan-Songjiang combined line is a 110 kV single
power supply line. It is composed of one overhead line sec-
tion whose length is 8.975 km, and one underground cable
section whose length is 1.695 km. The velocity of travelling
waves in the cable was set as vC 172 m/s, and the ve-
locity of travelling waves in the overhead line was set as
vO 295 m/s.
At 14:57:23, May 13th, 2010, a fault occurred on Fu-
shan-Songjiang combined line. The fault generated transient
waveforms recorded by the two fault locators at both ends
of Fushan-Songjiang combined line are shown in Figure 4
and Figure 5 respectively.

Figure 2 Structure of the developed travelling wave based fault locating

system for a HV combined line.

At each terminal of the combined line, there are two de-

vices including a fault locator based on double-ended tra-
velling wave principle and a GPS based power system syn-
chronous clock.
The two fault locators can communicate with each other
Figure 4 The fault generated transient waveforms recorded at Fushan
through 2M multiplexing optical-fiber channel. substation.


 2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection

responding fault locating system is also developed success-

fully.
The actual operation experience shows that the presented
fault location technology for high voltage combined lines
based on double-ended travelling wave principle is feasible,
and it has a wide application perspective with the rapid de-
velopment of urban power grid.

1 Ge Yaozhong, New tpes of potective rlaying and fult lcation teory

Figure 5 The fault generated transient waveforms recorded at Songjiang
substation.
The travelling wave triggering time (microsecond value)
of Songjiang side fault locator and Fushan side fault locator
was tM= 356563 s and tN = 356555 s respectively.
The time difference was 't MN 8 s, and the corres-
ponding setting value was 'TP 20.6 s. Obviously,
the fault was inside the overhead line section.
The fault distance given by the fault locating system was
4.761 km from Fushan and 5.909 km from Songjiang, and
the actual fault distance achieved through line patrol was
4.792 km from Fushan. The fault location result was correct
and the location error was only 31 m.
6 Conclusion
In this paper, a fault locating scheme based on travelling
wave principle for high voltage overhead lines combined
with underground power cables is presented, and the cor-
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