Fault Location in Distribution Systems

Distribution system is a main link between the power supply and the consumers and when a fault occurs in the distribution system it can affect the system continuity so it is essential to restore the system as quickly as possible. For the quick restoration fault location is essential. In this work the problem of fault location in distribution system for the IEEE 13 node test feeder is studied using the two techniques. The two techniques are Impedance based method and the Reactance based method. The main disadvantages of the impedance based method are the multiple estimation of faults due to the presence of different possible faulty points at the same distance. This drawback is overcome using the reactance based method so the results of these two techniques are compared for the different types of faults for different fault locations. There are different simulation tools available for the analysis of distribution systems such as Grid LAB-D, open DSS etc. , and in this work MATLAB simulation is used. The IEEE 13 node test feeder is simulated for verifying the existing fault location methods.