- The Key Laboratory of Smart Grid of Ministry of Education, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
A single-end fault location method for single-phase nonmetallic grounding faults of transmission lines in a double terminal system is studied and proposed. First, the reason for the poor accuracy of the single-end fault location method in case of single-phase nonmetallic grounding faults is analyzed theoretically, and the necessary conditions for the single-end accurate fault location are put forward. Second, under the necessary conditions of the single-end accurate fault location, according to the topology of fault component networks, the calculation method of the single-end accurate fault location of transmission lines in a double terminal system is studied. Moreover, the influence of line capacitance is considered in this fault location method, and a simple expression for calculating the fault distance is obtained. Finally, the transmission line with a single-phase nonmetallic grounding fault is modeled in PSCAD; therefore, the correctness and the ability against transition resistance of the new single-end fault location method are verified by simulation.
Introduction
In the operation of power systems, most faults occur in transmission lines; therefore, timely repair after line faults is the key to ensure the reliability of power supply. Accurate fault location can quickly locate the fault point, effectively reduce the burden of line inspection, and speed up the restoration of power supply. According to the source of fault information, the existing fault location methods for transmission line can be classified into two main types: the double-end fault location and the single-end fault location. In principle, the double-end fault location can eliminate the influence of transition resistance, which results in the advantages of a simple algorithm and high positioning accuracy; however, there also exist limitations such as data transmission depends on communication and some algorithms need data synchronization. However, the single-end fault location has the advantages of no communication impact and no need of data synchronization, which means the single-end fault location is of irreplaceable value in certain cases of power grids. According to the principle of fault location, the single-end fault location can be divided into the traveling wave method and the impedance method. The single-end fault location method using line impedance to calculate fault distance is widely used in power systems. However, in case of a fault with the existence of transition resistance, the single-end fault location method using the impedance method cannot directly calculate the fault distance in principle, which causes the poor accuracy of the single-end fault location in a nonmetallic fault; thus, the existence of transition resistance has become the biggest problem affecting the accuracy of the single-end fault location method. Therefore, it is of great practical value to theoretically analyze the reasons for the poor accuracy of the single-end fault location in the presence of transition resistance, find the necessary conditions for the single-end accurate fault location, and study and propose a new single-end accurate fault location method (Apostolopoulos and Korres, 2011; Bains and Zadeh, 2015; Fei et al., 2015; Ghorbani and Mehrjerdi, 2020; Kawady and Stenzel, 2003; Li et al., 2020; Wang and Chen, 2021; Wang et al., 2021; Xu and Zhang, 2015).
Experts around the world have done some research on the single-end fault location method in case of nonmetallic grounding faults in transmission lines. He et al. (2018) proposed an improved single-end fault location method which makes use of the electrical quantity at one end and the single-end fault location results at the other end so as to improve the accuracy of the fault location. However, this method depends on communication technology and needs to compare the location information at both ends of the line. Aboshady et al. (2019) proposed a fault location method based on single-end impedance and broadband frequency analysis. In this method, the fault is regarded as a high-frequency component voltage source injected into the system so as to solve the influence of transition resistance. Moreover, using the third-order Taylor expansion of the transmission line equation, a third-order polynomial about the fault distance x is obtained at the fault point, and the fault distance x is calculated by iterative solution. However, when the fault distance x is solved by iteration, it is not proved that the iterative algorithm must be convergent from the mathematical principle. Jia et al. (2013) proposed a single-end fault location method based on impedance measurement, which includes iterative estimation of voltage before a fault and the least square curve fitting. The algorithm provides fast and accurate fault location by comparing the calculated line reactance between the fault point and the measurement point with the known line reactance. However, the algorithm does not consider the influence of line capacitance on fault location and thus cannot be applied to the lines with large capacitance parameters. Patynowski et al. (2015) proposed a fault location method based on synchronized phasor. The solution includes three algorithms for different fault types. These algorithms calculate by using synchronized information to solve the problem of the large ranging error for fault location when there exists transition resistance. However, due to the use of synchronized phasor, additional clock synchronization of data through Ethernet or radio is required; that is, the fault location algorithm will depend on communication. Bains et al. (2017) proposed an improved fault location algorithm based on the impedance method for double circuit transmission lines. The algorithm eliminates the transition resistance by constructing the KVL equation of double circuit lines in a fault negative-sequence network and obtains the equation containing the fault distance. However, the algorithm cannot eliminate the influence of the negative-sequence internal impedance of the opposite system. When the negative-sequence internal impedance of the opposite system changes greatly, the accuracy of the algorithm will be reduced. Taheri et al. (2020) proposed a fault location algorithm based on a fault sequence component network for series capacitor–compensated transmission lines. The algorithm reads the data at the speed of 1 kHz, uses the formula to solve 61 fault distances in the generated 61 data windows, then eliminates the fault location results with low probability of occurrence, and takes the harmonic average of the remaining ranging results as the final fault location results. However, when the algorithm produces the final fault location results, it depends on the selection of eliminated data and cannot directly calculate the fault location results accurately.
The above references do not indicate the fundamental reason why the single-end fault location method cannot calculate the accurate fault distance when there exists transition resistance. Therefore, based on the analysis of existing methods, this work first studies the necessary conditions for the single-end accurate fault location method in case of the single-phase grounding fault through transition resistance of transmission lines. Second, based on the necessary conditions of the single-end accurate fault location and the equivalent circuit structure of the fault component network, a new method is studied in order to realize the single-end accurate fault location in the presence of transition resistance, and the influence of line capacitance on fault location is also considered. Finally, the correctness and the ability against transition resistance of the proposed new method are verified by simulation.
The Principle of Single-End Fault Location and the Necessary Conditions for Accurate Ranging
The schematic diagram of single-phase nonmetallic grounding fault of the double terminal system transmission line studied in this work is shown in Supplementary Figure S1. There are an M-side equivalent system and an N-side equivalent system on both sides of the transmission line. Take the electrical quantity at the M-side as an example for single-end fault location, and the set point m as the electrical quantity measurement point. The total length of the line is l km, and A-phase grounding fault passing through the transition resistance
Among them,
In order to eliminate the influence of load currents under fault conditions, the fault component is used to study the fault location method (Zhang et al., 2006). The fault component network in the additional fault state in case of A-phase nonmetallic grounding faults is established by fault state decomposition, as shown in Supplementary Figure S2.Here,
where
In this study, only the steady-state fault component is applied in the calculation process. Therefore, the grounding fault branch with transition resistance can be equivalent to a power frequency constant current source
By observing the equations shown in (Eq. 7) and combining the current voltage relationship between phase B and phase C shown in (Eq. 5) and (Eq. 6), it can be found that Eq. 3 is linearly related to Eq. 4. This shows that although the equivalent circuit diagram contains four meshes, due to the particularity of parameters, it can only write three independent loop current equations. The equations contain five unknown quantities:
According to the theory of solving equations in mathematics, the fault distance x cannot be solved because the number of unknown quantities is more than the number of independent equations, which is the fundamental reason why the single-end fault location method cannot achieve accurate fault location in the case of single-phase nonmetallic grounding faults.
It can be seen that if you want to use the single terminal quantity for accurate calculation of fault distances in case of single-phase nonmetallic grounding faults, you also need to know two of the four unknown quantities
According to the operation knowledge of power systems, the positive-sequence internal impedance
Single-End Accurate Fault Location Method
Single-End Accurate Fault Location Method Without Considering Line Capacitance
It can be seen from the analysis in Section 1 that when the necessary conditions for the single-end accurate fault location are met, that is, when the positive-sequence internal impedance
Eqs 2–4 in the equation group shown in (Eq. 7) constitute the phasor equation of the three-phase ABC. Therefore, the phasor equation can be converted into a sequence equation by using the phase sequence transformation formula (Yi et al., 2005) shown in (Eq. 8).
where
Through the processing of phase sequence transformation formulas, the equation group composed of a positive-sequence equation and a zero-sequence equation can be obtained, as shown in (Eq. 9).
Meanwhile, the relationship between the unit positive-sequence impedance
By introducing (Eq. 10) into (Eq. 9), the equations shown in (Eq. 11) can be obtained:
The expression of
Next, (Eq. 12) is brought into the zero-sequence equation in (Eq. 11) and simplified to obtain the expression of the fault distance x, as shown in (Eq. 13):
where the expression of the parameters k1–k4 is shown in (Eq. 14):
It can be seen from (Eq. 13) that the voltage and current of the positive sequence and zero sequence in the equation can be obtained by the phase sequence transformation from the voltage and current variations of each phase measured at the measuring point. The total length l of the line, the positive-sequence impedance
Through the above analysis, it can be seen that under different fault conditions, the parameters k1–k4 in (Eq. 13) are known quantities in the plural form; thus, the solution of the fault distance x is actually the ratio obtained by dividing two known plural numbers. Due to certain measurement and calculation errors, the fault distance x obtained by plural division is generally in the plural form. Therefore, the modulus of the fault distance x in the plural form is taken as the final ranging result, as shown in (Eq. 15).
In the fault distance calculation formula (Eq. 15) obtained according to the above derivation processes, the capacitance parameters of the transmission line are not considered. When the capacitance parameters of the transmission line are small, the ranging error is very slight, and the above equation can be established. However, when the capacitance parameters of the transmission line are large in case of selecting the cable as the transmission line, the accuracy of the fault distance calculated by (Eq. 15) may be poor. Therefore, the single-end fault location method considering the transmission line capacitance parameters is studied as follows.
Single-End Accurate Fault Location Method Considering Line Capacitance
Since the capacitance parameters of overhead lines are small, it is not necessary to consider the line capacitance for overhead transmission lines; however, for cable lines, the phase-to-ground capacitance parameters are large and contain no phase-to-phase capacitance. Therefore, only when the cable is used as the transmission line, the influence of the phase-to-ground capacitance for the single-end fault location method needs to be considered.
The transmission system equivalent model consistent with Supplementary Figure S1 is adopted. When considering the phase-to-ground capacitance of the cable transmission line, the
As shown in Supplementary Figure S4,
As shown in (Eq. 16), it can be seen that the cable transmission line will generate six phase-to-ground capacitive currents after
According to the circuit equivalence method in Section 1, the equivalent circuit of fault component network when considering the phase-to-ground capacitance of the cable transmission line is shown in Supplementary Figure S5.
According to the experience in writing equations in Section 1, the circuits l1 = b2b3b6, l2 = b4b6, and l3 = b5b6 are selected to write the loop current equation in the form of the three-phase ABC phasor, as shown in (Eq. 17).
where
Similarly, according to the phase sequence transformation formula shown in (Eq. 8) and the line impedance relationship shown in (Eq. 10), the equations composed of the positive-sequence and zero-sequence equations can be obtained from (Eq. 17), as shown in (Eq. 19).
where
The expression of
Next, (Eq. 21) is brought into the zero-sequence equation in (Eq. 19) and then simplified to obtain the expression of the fault distance x, as shown in (Eq. 22).
where the expression of parameters h1–h4 is shown in (Eq. 23):
It can be seen that all variables in the equation are known quantities through (Eq. 22) and the analysis in Section 2.1; thus, the known quantities with all of the parameters h1–h4 being in plural forms can be obtained under different fault conditions. Similarly, the fault distance x can be obtained after taking the modulus value, as shown in (Eq. 24):
When calculating the phase-to-ground capacitive current
Simulation Verification of Single-End Fault Location Method
In this study, the PSCAD simulation software is used to verify the fault location method, and the respective power parameters of the M-side and N-side of the three-phase symmetrical system are set, as shown in Table 1.
A double terminal system, as shown in Supplementary Figure S1, is built in PSCAD, and the overhead line model and cable model are, respectively, selected as the transmission lines so as to verify the proposed single-end accurate fault location method.
First, the transmission line is set as an overhead line with a total length of 300 km, the Bergeron model is adopted, and the line parameters are input by geometric parameters. The parameter values of the unit positive-sequence impedance
Next, the transmission line is replaced with a cable, the total length of the line is set as 50 km, the Bergeron model is adopted, and the line parameters with geometric parameters are input. The respective parameter values of the unit positive-sequence impedance
The A-phase nonmetallic grounding faults are set at distances of 50, 150, and 250 km from the overhead transmission line to the M-side system and at distances of 10, 25, and 40 km from the cable transmission line to the M-side system, with transition resistances of 100
According to the measured data of the measuring point, the three-phase voltage and current variations of the M-side can be obtained under different fault distances and transition resistances. Combined with the line parameters of overhead lines and cables, the fault distance x is calculated by, respectively, using the ranging formula (Eq. 15) without considering the capacitance and the ranging (Eq. 24) considering the capacitance to verify the correctness of the single-end accurate fault location method. The calculation formulas for defining the absolute error
where
For overhead transmission lines, the fault distances and error rates obtained under different transition resistances and different actual fault positions can be calculated by using the ranging formula (Eq. 15) without considering the capacitance of the overhead lines, as shown in Table 2.
It can be seen from Table 2 that the maximum relative error of the ranging results is 1.33% because the capacitance parameters of the overhead line model are small; thus, the ranging results calculated by using the ranging formula (Eq. 15) without considering the capacitance of the overhead line can be of great accuracy. This shows that the ranging formula (Eq. 15) is correct and of great accuracy with a strong ability against transition resistances when the transmission line capacitance is small.
We also simulate overhead transmission lines with different line lengths from 200 to 500 km. According to the simulation results, the fault location formula (Eq. 15) without considering the line capacitance parameters can achieve accurate location within the range of line length not exceeding 400 km. Although the fault location accuracy decreases with the increase in the line length, the relative errors of all fault location results are within 2%. The correction effect of the fault location (Eq. 24) considering line capacitance is not obvious when the length of the overhead line exceeds 200 km, and with the increase in the line length, the accuracy of the location result of (Eq. 24) is even lower than that of (Eq. 15). Because the line model is the
For cable transmission lines, the fault distances and error rates are calculated by using the ranging formula (Eq. 15) without considering the cable line capacitance. The fault distances and error rates are shown in Table 3 under different transition resistances and different actual fault positions.
It can be seen from Table 3 that the maximum relative error of the ranging results is 29.97%, which is due to the large phase-to-ground capacitance parameters of the cable line model and the calculation by using the ranging formula (Eq. 15) without considering the cable line capacitance parameters. Therefore, the influence of the capacitance current must be considered when the capacitance parameter of the transmission line is large. In this case, the error of the ranging formula (Eq. 15) is significant.
For cable transmission lines, the fault distances and error rates are calculated by using the ranging formula (Eq. 24) considering the phase-to-ground capacitance of cable lines. The fault distances and error rates are shown in Table 4 under different transition resistances and different actual fault positions.
It can be seen from Table 4 that the maximum relative error of ranging results is reduced from 29.97% to −1.62%; that is, the accuracy of ranging results has been greatly improved after considering the phase-to-ground capacitance of the cable line. This shows that when the phase-to-ground capacitance of the transmission line itself is large, the fault distance needs to be calculated by using the ranging formula (Eq. 24) considering the phase-to-ground capacitance, which can effectively improve the ranging accuracy with a strong ability against transition resistances.
We also simulate cable lines with different line lengths from 50 to 100 km. According to the simulation results, the fault location results of (Eq. 15) without considering the line capacitance parameters have large fault location errors for the cable line under the above length range. The fault location results of (Eq. 24) considering the line capacitance can accurately locate the fault when the cable line is no more than 100 km. The relative errors of all fault location results are within 2%.
Conclusion
This work studies a new method of the single-end fault location for single-phase grounding faults of the transmission lines passing through transition resistances, puts forward the necessary conditions and the accurate location method of the single-end accurate fault location, and solves the problem of poor accuracy of the single-end fault location in principle. The simulation results show that the single-end accurate fault location method proposed in this study really has sufficient accuracy and a strong ability against transition resistances, and the advantages are as follows:
1) This study deeply analyzes the single-end fault location method as well as the reasons for the low accuracy of the single-end fault location from the principle level and creatively puts forward the necessary conditions for the single-end accurate fault location method. That is, the positive-sequence internal impedance
2) By using the
3) The phasor equations are transformed into positive-sequence and zero-sequence equations using the phase sequence transformation formula. A simple single-end accurate fault location formula with certain duality law is obtained with the use of the simplified calculation, which improves the practicability of this ranging method.
4) The fault location formula (Eq. 15) without considering the line capacitance parameters should be used for overhead line fault location. The fault location (Eq. 24) considering line capacitance should be used for cable line fault location.
Data Availability Statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material; further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Author Contributions
BoL contributed technical ideas; LS was responsible for the specific implementation of the technical scheme; WW provided technical support for the study; BiL provided technical support for the study; and XC provided technical support for the study.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s Note
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Supplementary Material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2021.772345/full#supplementary-material
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Keywords: double terminal system, transition resistance, single-phase grounding fault, single-ended fault location, extreme high voltage
Citation: Li B, Shi L, Wen W, Li B, Chen X and Su J (2021) Research on a New Single-End Fault Location Method for Single-Phase Grounding Faults of Transmission Lines Through Transition Resistance. Front. Energy Res. 9:772345. doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2021.772345
Received: 08 September 2021; Accepted: 03 November 2021;
Published: 08 December 2021.
Edited by:
Muhammad Wakil Shahzad, Northumbria University, United KingdomReviewed by:
Mai Chan Lau, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (A∗STAR), SingaporeMuhammad Ahmad Jamil, Northumbria University, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2021 Li, Shi, Wen, Li, Chen and Su. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Weijie Wen, d2VpamllLndlbkB0anUuZWR1LmNu