Identifying Faulty Feeder for Single-Phase High Impedance Fault in Resonant Grounding Distribution System

Abstract

The identification of faulty feeder for single-phase high impedance faults (HIFs), especially in resonant grounding distribution system (RGDS), has always been a challenge, and existing faulty feeder identification techniques for HIFs suffer from some drawbacks. For this problem, the fault transient characteristic of single-phase HIF is analyzed and a faulty feeder identification method for HIF is proposed. The analysis shows that the transient zero-sequence current of each feeder is seen as a linear relationship between bus transient zero-sequence voltage and bus transient zero-sequence voltage derivative, and the coefficients are the reciprocal of transition resistance and feeder own capacitance, respectively, in both the over-damping state and the under-damping state. In order to estimate transition resistance and capacitance of each feeder, a least squares algorithm is utilized. The estimated transition resistance of a healthy feeder is infinite theoretically, and is a huge value practically. However, the estimated transition resistance of faulty feeder is approximately equal to actual fault resistance value, and it is far less than the set threshold. According to the above significant difference, the faulty feeder can be identified. The efficiency of the proposed method for the single-phase HIF in RGDS is verified by simulation results and experimental results that are based on RTDS.