Wireless communication based single-phase earth fault location in distribution network and its dynamic simulation experiment

In allusion to the difficulty of single-phase earth fault location in distribution system with non-solidly earthed network, a wireless communication based single-phase earth fault location system composed of line-measuring units and a monitoring station is developed. The line-measuring units are installed at main nodes of the distribution system and the monitoring station is configured in substation. In the developed system the communication among line-measuring units is implemented by ZigBee module and the communication among line-measuring units and monitoring station is implemented by GPRS module, and the synchronization of the sampling in the whole distribution system is implemented by GPS. The developed fault location system is suitable for various kinds of fault locations and by which such functions as synchronized sampling of electric operating parameters, wireless communication, data storage, operational state monitoring and fault location can be realized. Corresponding to the fault location system, a thinking of fault location, namely firstly determining the branch where fault occurs and then locating the fault, is proposed. The correctness and effectiveness of the proposed fault location thinking are validated by the results of theoretical analysis, PSCAD-based simulation and dynamic simulation experiments.