• Introduction to Project

• Underground cable v/s Overhead cables

• Faults in underground cables
• Methods for the Detection of faults
• Introduction to the Circuit
• Working of the Circuit
• Different circuit components
• Advantages
• Applications
• Conclusion
• The objective of this project is to determine the
distance of underground cable fault from base
station in kilometers using an Arduino board.

• Many time faults occur due to construction works

and other reasons.

• Cables have some resistance. We are mainly

focusing that resistance. Resistance can vary with
respect to the length of the cable.
• If the length of the cable is increase, the value of
the resistance will also increase.
• If any deviation occurs in the resistance value, we will
call that is fault point and finding that place through
Arduino technology.
• That fault point represents the standard of distance
(kilometre) from the base station. This value is
displayed by display unit.
• Before attempting to locate underground cable faults
on cable, it is necessary to know where the cable is
located and what route it takes. If the fault is on
secondary cable, knowing the exact route is even more
critical.
• Since it is extremely difficult to find a cable fault without
knowing where the cable is, it makes sense to master
cable locating and tracing and to do a cable trace before
beginning the fault locating process.

• Success in locating or tracing the route of electrical cable

and metal pipe depends upon knowledge, skill, and
perhaps, most of all, experience.

• Although locating can be a complex job, it will very likely

become even more complex as more and more
underground plant is installed. It is just as important to
understand how the equipment works as it is to be
thoroughly familiar withthe exact equipment being used.
Suitable for congested urban It is more
areas where overhead lines Possess no danger to
wildlife or low flying Expensive
may be difficult or impossible
to install aircraft

Fault point cannot

Low maintenance be easily located
Required

Small voltage
drops UNDER Can not beeasily
GROUND Repaired
CABLES
Fewer faults

It can work only

No interference with upto 66 kv due to
communication system insulation difficulties

Not susceptible to shaking and

shorting due to vibrations,wind, Erection cost of highvoltage
accidents, etc. cable is very high
 Open circuit Short circuit
Fault Fault Earth Fault

• When there is a break in • When two conductors of a • When the conductor of a cable
the Conductor of a cable, multi core cable come in comes in contact with earth.
it is called open circuit fault. critical contact with each • To identify this fault, one
other due to insulation
• The open-circuit fault can be terminal of the megger is
failure, it is so called as short
check ed by a megger. circuit fault. connected to the conductor
• The two terminals of a
and the other terminal
• The megger will indicate zero connected to the earth.
megger are connected to any
resistance in the circuit of the two conductors.
• The megger indicates zero
conductor that is not broken.• If the megger give a zero reading; it means the conductor
reading it indicates short- is earthed.
• However if a conductor is circuit fault between these
broken the megger will conductors.
indicate an infinite resistance
 Online Method Off-Line Method

• Online method uses and • This method uses a special instrument

process the sampled Current to test out service of cable in the
and voltages to determine the field. Offline method is classified into
fault points. two methods, as: tracer method and
terminal method.
Terminal Tracer
Methods Method
• Terminal method is used to detect the
• In this method fault of the cable can
location of the fault in a cable from one be detected by walking on the cable
end or both the ends without tracking. lines. Fault location is denoted from
This method is used to find general electromagnetic signal or audible
areas of the fault to accelerate tracking signal. This method is used to find the
on buried cable. fault location very accurately.
• While a fault occurs for some reason, at that time the repairing process related to
that particular cable is difficult due to not knowing the exact location of the
cable fault. The proposed system is to find the exact location of the fault.
• This project uses Ohms Law concept, when a low voltage DC is applied to the
feeder end through a series resistor, then the current would differ based on the
location of fault occurred in the cable.
• In case is there any short circuit occurred from line to ground, then the voltage
across series resistor alters accordingly, then it is fed to an analog to digital
converter to develop exact data, which the pre programmed Arduino module will
display in kilometres.
• The proposed system is designed with a set of resistors to signifying the length of
a cable in kilometers, and the fault creation is designed with a set of switches at
every known kilometer (KM) to cross check the exactness of the same. The fault
happening at a specific distance and the particular phase is displayed on an LCD
interfaced to the arduino.
• The project uses a set of resistances in series i.e. R10, R11, R12,
R13 and R14, R15, R16, R17,& R18, R19, R20, R21, as shown in
the circuit diagram, one set for each phase.
• Each series resistors represents the resistance of the
underground cable for a specific distance thus 4 such
resistances in series represent 1- 4 kms.
• 3 relays are used to common point of their contacts are
grounded while the NO points are connected to the input of
the R10, R14 & R18 being the 3 phase cable input.
• Fault creation is made by a set of switches at every
known KM tocross check the accuracy of the same.
• The fault occurring at a particular distance and the respective
phase is displayed on a LCD interfaced to the Arduino board.
  Power supply:
220

230/12V
The 230V AC supply is first stepped down to 12V AC using a
step down transformer.

 This is then converted to DC using bridge rectifier.

The AC ripples is filtered out by using a capacitor and given

to the input pin of voltage regulator 7805.

At output pin of this regulator we get a constant 5V DC

which is used for arduino and other ICs in this project.
 Relay
Relay is sensing device which senses the fault & send a
 trip signal to circuit breaker to isolate the faulty section.

Here three mini power relays are used each for one of the
three phases. The relays periodically scan the three
 phases and send the signal to the arduino controller.

 The rating of each of the relays is about 12V.

ARDUINO:
 Arduino is an open-source platform used for building
electronics projects. Arduino consists of both a
physical programmable circuit board (often referred
to as a microcontroller) and a piece of software, or
IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that
runs on our computer, used to write and upload
computer code to the physical board.

 Arduino does not need a separate piece of hardware

(called a programmer) in order to load new code
onto the board. We can simply use a USB cable.
VOLTAGE REGULATOR :

 A voltage regulator is an electrical regulator

designed to automatically maintain a constant
voltage level.

In this project, power supply of 5V and 12V are

required. In order to obtain these voltage levels,
7805 and 7812 voltage regulators are to be used.
 Liquid crystal display (LCD)
 Most common LCDs connected to the arduino are 16x2 and 20x2 displays.
 This means 16 characters per line by 2 lines and 20 characters per line by 2
lines, respectively.
 The standard is referred to as HD44780U, which refers to the controller chip
which receives data from an external source and communicates directly with
the LCD.
GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) is a digital mobile
telephone system that is widely used in many parts of the world.

GSM uses a variation of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and

is the most widely used of the three digital wireless telephone
technologies (TDMA, GSM, and CDMA).

GSM operates in the 900MHz, 1800MHz, or 1900 MHz frequency

bands.
GSM has been the backbone of the phenomenal success in mobile
telecoms over the last decade.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based navigation
system made up of a network of 24 satellites placed into orbit by the
U.S. Department of Defense.
LS2302L is a GPS receiver (also known as GPS mouse) with
8- megabyte flash memory for GPS data logger.

 It can record up to 260,096 data points in a circular or FIFO format.

At the same time, it also outputs real time GPS NMEA data
for navigation.
NMEA record Description
GGA Global positioning system fixed data
GLL Geographic position - latitude/longitude
GSA GNSS DOP and active satellites
GSV GNSS satellites in view
RMC Recommended minimum specific GNSS data
VTG Course over ground and ground speed
 ADVANTAGES:
1) Less maintenance
2) It has higher efficiency
3) Less fault occur in underground cable
4)Underground cable fault location model are applicable to all types
of cable ranging from 1kv to 500kv&other types of cable fault such
as-Short circuit fault, cable cuts, Resistive fault, Sheath faults,
Water trees, Partial discharges.
5) Improved public safety.

APPLICATIONS:
1. INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS
2. GROUND CABLE FAULT DETECTION APPLCIATIONS
3. ELECTRICAL CABLE FAULT DETCTION
APPLICATIONS
 Thus the project on Underground cable fault
detection using Arduino was done and the distance
of the fault from the base station in kilometers was
displayed for the three individual phases R, Y and B.
Circuit can be tested with different resistor values to
simulate various fault conditions In this project faults
upto a distance of 4km can be detected. When the
fault switches are operated to fault condition then
the phase corresponding to that particular switch is
considered as the faulty phase. So the faulty section
can easily be located. In this paper we used GSM and
GPS to get the sms alert about the fault location
lattitudually and longitudinally.
FUTURE SCOPE:-

 In this project we detect only the location of

short circuit fault in underground cable line,
but we also detect the location of open circuit
fault, to detect the open circuit fault
capacitor is used in ac circuit which measure
the change in impedance & calculate the
distance of fault.