Accurate Identification of Fault Location for Active Distribution System Using Various Phasor Estimation Methods

Ensuring a resilient and dependable power supply is becoming progressively more vital in contemporary Active Distribution Systems (ADS). Inclusion of inverter based DGs and nonlinear smart loads causes in waveform distortion reducing the power quality. This increases the error in phasor estimation which is essential in computation of fault location. Further, the infeed current from the other end, due to inverter-based Distributed Generators (IBDGs), increases the error in fault distance computation from the measurement bus. Nevertheless, technological progress in ADS involves the utilization of intelligent smart meters for comprehensive data collection to monitor and improve the reliability. Such an advanced platform has the ability to provide clear picture during the fault which can be utilized to locate the fault. In this work, different phasor estimation techniques; Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), Hilbert Transform (HT), Least Square Technique (LSQ) are employed to estimate the phasor which is utilized to compute the differences between pre-fault and post-fault positive, negative, and zero-sequence currents to identify the faulty section. Following that the impedance and reactance is computed using faulty section measurement to find the fault location. Validation of result through the simulation of IEEE 33 bus distribution system in MATLAB/SIMULINK illustrate that the localization percentage error remains within acceptable limit even in the presence of IBDGs an variation in fault resistance.