On the Use of Continuous-wavelet Transform for Fault Location in Distribution Power Networks

The paper illustrates a procedure, based on the continuous-wavelet transform, for the analysis of voltage transients due to line faults and discusses its application to fault location in power distribution networks. The analysis carried out allows us to infer that correlation does exist between some characteristic frequencies of the transformed signal and specific paths in the network covered by the traveling waves originated by the fault. This correlation provides useful information for the location of the faulted section in a MV distribution network starting from the recorded voltage transients at one or more busses. The presented approach can find a useful application in the realization of a distributed measurement and fault locating system. A brief description of the basic concepts of such a system and a first estimation of the relevant uncertainty are also provided in the paper.