A Fast and Accurate Fault Location Method for Distribution Networks with DG Using Genetic Algorithms

This paper proposes a fault-location method for distribution networks with dispersed generation (DG) based on the measured voltages at DG terminals. The main idea is to estimate the faulty node by considering the fault in different points and exploring the level of similarity between the calculated and measured voltage sags. In the proposed method, this process is considered as an optimization problem of which the fault location and fault resistance are unknown variables and an efficient genetic algorithm-based technique is developed to obtain an optimal solution. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by simulation studies on a 25-node distribution system. The results indicate that using an intelligent search procedure, the method has a good performance for different values of fault resistances, and locations.