Fault Distance Location on an Electrical Transmission Line of a Medium-Voltage Network Using a New Solutions of the Telegraphy Equations

A fault location method in an electrical network is a combination of procedures, hardware, and software. determining the position of a fault in the network. This method calculates the distance between a reference position and the faulty position. Nowadays, at Société Nationale d'Electricité du Burkina (SONABEL), impedance and reflectometry methods are used to locate faults by measuring the distance between the voltage injection source in the cable and the fault point. This measured distance is generally shorter than the actual distance of the fault, resulting in a relatively high error rate, often close to 30%, which varies according to the method used. However, SONABEL uses energy management methods associated with a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, which monitors the real-time current, voltage, power, and energy flowing through the network. But, they are less interested in the instantaneous localization of faults in power network cables. In this article, we aim to develop a procedure for integrating voltage-current decomposition, impedance, and reflectometry methods in the form of a stand-alone instantaneous fault location system for a medium-voltage (MV) network cable, which SONABEL could use to improve their SCADA. We aim also to compute the distance between the fault position and the voltage injection source, to minimize the localization error rate. The various simulations used to determine fault positions and calculate the corresponding distances were carried out using MATLAB. These simulations, without any real values, cover the analysis of the effects of a fault on the signals propagating in the electrical cable, in terms of frequency and amplitude, using the voltage-current method, the impedance method, and reflectometry. They also included simulations of signals representing both normal and faulty cable states, in terms of amplitude and frequency. All the simulations produced highly satisfactory results, with a low error rate of 0.24% for all the methods, demonstrating the reliability of all the fault location formulas used.