Evaluating ground fault current distribution on overhead transmission lines using an iterative nodal analysis

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present an original iterative nodal approach to calculate the fault current distribution on overhead lines.Design/methodology/approachBy changing the mutual couplings among different conductors into the equivalent voltage sources, node voltages are updated iteratively by using conventional nodal analysis with those additional sources until the convergence is achieved.FindingsThe proposed algorithm can handle the complicated topology of a power transmission line and has no difficulties in taking all physical couplings into account. The fault current distribution calculated by this method is in good agreement with those published in the literature. Although the proposed approach is iterative, the CPU time needed is still reasonable compared to the direct solution approach. The memory requirement is low because the coefficient matrix is highly sparse for the nodal analysis of each iteration loop.Originality/valueThe proposed approach can serve as an alternative in calculating the fault current because of its efficiency and ease of implementation.