Fault Location in Smart Distribution Network Considering Dynamic Load Estimation of Feeder against Human Made Outages

Human manipulation is one of the reasons which causes a fault in distribution networks and power outage is occurred. For such matter, a prompt procedure of locating the fault and identifying subversive factors is consequential. In this paper, an improved impedance-based fault location method is proposed in smart distribution networks. Data loggers record load data with a specified time constant. Therefore, the load of each node is estimated by utilizing the pre-recorded load data. Furthermore, by employing line parameters and estimated loads, the equivalent impedance at the end of each section is calculated. Fault location is conducted through solving a fifth order algebraic equation with regard to fault distance using distributed parameters line model.  To evaluate the accuracy of the proposed method, a modified 11 node test Feeder is simulated in MATLAB software (R2018b). The results are presented in different fault conditions such as fault distances, fault types, fault resistances and fault inception angles. The results indicate the high accuracy of this method.