IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 27, NO.

1, JANUARY 2012

325

Double-Circuit Transmission-Line Fault

Location With the Availability of
Limited Voltage Measurements
Ning Kang, Member, IEEE, and Yuan Liao, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper presents a new approach for locating

short-circuit faults on a double-circuit transmission line. Various
algorithms have been proposed previously that usually require
measurements recorded from one or two buses of the faulted
line. However, such measurements may not always be available in
some scenarios, rendering inapplicability of existing methods. To
complement existing methods, this paper proposes a novel, general
fault-location method by harnessing voltage measurements at one
or more buses, which may not be taken from the faulted line. The
bus impedance matrix of each sequence network with the addition
of a fictitious bus at the fault point can be derived as a function of
the fault location. The fault location can then be obtained based
on the bus impedance matrix and voltage measurements. The
distributed parameter line model is utilized. The network data are
assumed to be available so that the bus impedance matrix can be
constructed. When multiple voltage measurements are available,
an optimal estimator capable of identifying bad measurement data
is also proposed for enhanced fault location. Since field data are
not available at this time, simulated data are utilized for evaluation
studies, and quite accurate results have been achieved.
Index TermsBus impedance matrix, distributed parameter
line model, double-circuit transmission line, fault location, optimal
estimator.

I. INTRODUCTION

OUBLE-CIRCUIT transmission lines, also known

as parallel lines, have been adopted more in modern
power systems for improved reliability and security of energy
transmission, although double-circuit lines may impose more
protection challenges than single-circuit lines. As is known,
following the occurrence of a fault, it is important to promptly
and accurately locate the fault and repair the faulted component
to reduce outage time and loss of revenue [1], [2].
A lot of fault-location algorithms that are focused on singlecircuit lines have been developed in the past several decades
[3][7]. On the other hand, diverse fault-location techniques
for double-circuit lines have been studied extensively as well.
The authors of [8] propose an algorithm utilizing one-terminal

Manuscript received May 20, 2011; revised August 01, 2011; accepted
September 08, 2011. Date of publication October 18, 2011; date of current
version December 23, 2011. This work was supported by the National Science
Foundation under Grant ECCS-0801367. Paper no. TPWRD-00425-2011.
N. Kang is with ABB Corporate Research Center, Raleigh, NC 27606 USA
(e-mail: ning.kang@us.abb.com).
Y. Liao is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506 USA (e-mail: yliao@engr.uky.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2011.2168547

voltage and current data, with the estimation accuracy being influenced by the fault resistance. Eriksson et al. employ phase
voltages and currents from the near end of the faulted section
as input signals and fully compensate the error introduced by
the fault resistance [9]. Based on the assumption that the line
is homogeneous, [10] makes use of modal transformation and
the local terminal voltage and current to locate the fault. Six
voltage equations are constructed around the parallel loops for
positive-, negative- and zero-sequence networks in [11], from
which the fault location is solved. By building voltage equations along parallel loops, the authors in [12] address fault location for the nonearth fault. Reference [13] constructs the voltage
equations but does not include the current phasors of the adjacent sound line local end information based on the consideration that in some practical systems, these current phasors are
not available. Izykowski et al. [14] formulate the generalized
model for fault loops by using local-end voltages and complete
currents from healthy and faulted double-circuit lines. Using the
technique similar to [11][14], the authors of [15] have developed a fault-location algorithm applicable to untransposed lines,
which utilizes the lumped line model ignoring the shunt capacitance. The common characteristic of [11][15] is that they are
all one-end algorithms and independent of the fault resistance.
A two-terminal method by using unsynchronized voltage and
current phasors based on the distributed parameter model is
discussed by Johns et al. [16]. The authors in [17] have proposed an iterative approach to improve the accuracy of the fault
distance estimate and it does not require synchronization of
measurements. Reference [18] relates the synchronized voltage
and current phasors of the sending end and receiving end with
parameters, from which the fault location is derived.
In [19], based on the differential component net decomposed
from the original net, two voltage distributions along the line
are calculated from the unsynchronized two-terminal currents.
The fault location is determined based on the fact that these two
voltage distributions have the least difference at the fault point.
Chen et al. [20] have proposed a new protection scheme by using
synchronized phasors at both terminals of the line for transposed
and untransposed parallel lines. By decoupling the parallel lines
using eigenvalue theory, both the fault detection and location indices have been obtained. Based on a three-terminal fault location algorithm and an equivalent conversion from an n-terminal
system to a three-terminal system, the method proposed in [21]
utilizes unsynchronized current phasors of all terminals to locate
the fault, neglecting shunt capacitances. Funabashi et al. [22]
present two multiterminal lumped parameter model-based algorithms: impedance calculation and current diversion ratio.

0885-8977/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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Synchronization for all of the terminal voltages and currents

is needed. An ANN-based approach has been proposed in [23]
with the ability to perform fault classification and fault location.
In general, existing algorithms require voltages and currents
from one or two terminals of the faulted line, or from all terminals of a multiterminal line. For the scenario where only several
measurements, which may be far away from the faulted line, are
available, those methods are not suitable anymore. For example,
the utility companies only install a limited number of recording
devices to reduce costs. Moreover, the recording devices may
not always be triggered to record a fault event.
To fill the gap, a possible method based on the bus impedance
matrix technique is proposed in [24]. The distinctive characteristic of this method is that it only demands voltage measurements from one or two buses, which may be distant from the
faulted line. The method is based on the lumped parameter line
model without considering the shunt capacitance. To further increase accuracy for long transmission lines, this paper aims at
developing fault-location algorithms based on the distributed
parameter line model, which fully takes the shunt capacitance
of the line into consideration. Voltage measurements are employed and no current measurements are required. Although the
derivation assumes that the network is transposed, the impact of
untransposition of lines is studied.
In addition, to make the most of multiple measurements, an
optimal estimator for the fault location is proposed that is capable of detecting and identifying bad measurements and, thus,
further enhancing fault-location accuracy.
The remainder of this paper is outlined as follows. Section II
presents the fault-location basis, based on which the fault-location method is detailed in Section III. An optimal estimator that
is able to detect and identify bad measurements is delineated in
Section IV. Evaluation studies are reported in Section V, followed by the conclusion.

II. FAULT-LOCATION BASIS

The basic methodology of the proposed fault-location
method is described as follows. Two fictitious buses are added
to the network. One is at the assumed fault point. The other is
at the point corresponding to the assumed fault point, but on
the healthy branch of the double-circuit line. Then, the driving
point impedance of the fault bus and the transfer impedances
between this bus and other buses are revealed as functions of
the unknown fault distance. According to the definition of the
bus impedance matrix, the voltage changes during the fault at
any bus can be formulated with respect to the corresponding
transfer impedance and fault current. In conjunction with
boundary conditions of different fault types, the fault location
can be obtained.
In this section, our objective is to decouple the original network into three independent sequence component networks and
construct the bus impedance matrix with additional buses for
each sequence network separately with respect to the unknown
fault distance.
First of all, the notations used in this work are summarized as
follows:

total number of buses of the prefault network;

buses of the faulted section;
fictitious bus and

fictitious bus representing the fault point and

;
unknown per-unit fault distance from bus ;
length of the line between buses

and

symmetrical component index;

, 1, 2
for zero-, positive- and negative-sequence,
respectively, inserted in parentheses as a
superscript throughout the paper;
sequence total equivalent self-series impedance
of the branch between buses and ; in
case of a double-circuit line sharing both
terminals and , an extra subscript is used
to distinguish the first and second parallel lines
;
(i.e.,
zero-sequence total equivalent mutual-series
impedance of the branches of the double-circuit
line between buses and ;
th sequence total equivalent self-shunt
admittance of the branch between buses and
; in case of a double-circuit line sharing both
terminals and , an extra subscript is used
to distinguish the first and second parallel lines
(i.e.,
);
zero-sequence total equivalent mutual-shunt
admittance of the branches of the double-circuit
line between buses and ;
zero-sequence total equivalent mutual-series
impedance and mutual-shunt admittance
between branches and , respectively;
zero-sequence total equivalent mutual-series
impedance and mutual-shunt admittance
between branches and , respectively;
bus impedance matrix of the prefault
sequence network; it has a size of by , whose
element on the th row and th column is
;
denoted as
bus impedance matrix of the th sequence
network with the addition of fictitious buses
and ; it has a size of
by
, whose
element on the th row and th column is
.
denoted by
The construction of bus impedance matrix with addition of
the fault bus for the zero-sequence network is first considered.
The prefault zero-sequence network of a sample power system
can be
is shown in Fig. 1, whose bus impedance matrix
readily developed, with detailed steps being referred to in [25,
pp. 299305]. Fig. 2 depicts the zero-sequence network with the
addition of two fictitious buses and .

KANG AND LIAO: DOUBLE-CIRCUIT TRANSMISSION-LINE FAULT LOCATION

327

where
(9)

(10)
(11)
(12)

Fig. 1. Prefault zero-sequence network.

and
zero-sequence per-unit length self-series impedance
of the line between buses and ;
zero-sequence per-unit length self-shunt admittance
(S/mile) of the line between buses and ;
zero-sequence per unit length mutual-series
between the two lines of buses
impedance
and ;
zero-sequence per-unit length mutual-shunt
admittance (S/mile) between the two lines of buses
and .
Fig. 2. Zero-sequence network with two additional fictitious buses.

Note that the studied parallel lines in our paper have identical
,
,
and
parameters, i.e.,
. The parameters in Fig. 2 in terms of
are as
follows [26]:

, suppose there is only one current source

To formulate
, then the resulting
injected into a single bus
will be the same for the netvoltages at bus
works shown in Figs. 1 and 2. According to the definition of
,
the bus impedance matrix, it is obtained that
. We have

(1)

..
.

..

..
.

..
.

..

..
.

..
.

..
.

(2)

..
.

..

..
.

..
.

..

..
.

..
.

..
.

(3)

(4)

(13)
,
, and
are derived with respect to network parameters as in (14) and (15) with the detail referenced
to Appendix A.

(5)
(14)
(6)

(7)

(8)

(15)
where , , , and are formulated with
,
,
,
,
,
,
and
;
and
in (15) can be obtained
and
in (14).
by letting
Substituting (1)(8) into (14) and (15) leads to the formulaand
with respect to and
tions of
known network parameters.

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The construction of the bus impedance matrix with the

addition of the fault bus for the positive-sequence network
can be obtained similarly, except there is no mutual coupling
between the two circuits. Without showing details, it has been
obtained, as shown in (16) and (17), at the bottom of the page,
that where

where
prefault positive-sequence voltage at bus
;
positive-, negative-, and zero-sequence
voltage at bus during fault, respectively;
positive-, negative-, and zero-sequence
fault current at the fault point, respectively.

(18)
(19)

and
positive-sequence per-unit length self-series
impedance
of the line between buses
;
positive-sequence per-unit length self-shunt
admittance (S/mile) of the line between buses

and

and .

Note that all of the sequence voltages and currents are for
phase A.
Equations (20)(22) demonstrate that the sequence voltage
change during the fault at any bus can be expressed with respect to the corresponding transfer impedance and sequence
fault current.
A. Two-Bus Fault-Location Algorithm
1) Fault Location With Synchronized Measurements From
Two Buses: Suppose the voltage measurements at buses and
are available. For bus , similar to (20),
the following formula exists:

It is assumed that the parameters are the same for positive.

and negative-sequence networks; thus, we have

(23)
Eliminating

from (20) and (23) results in

III. PROPOSED FAULT-LOCATION METHOD

In this section, fault-location algorithms employing voltage
measurements from one bus or two buses are derived. At bus
, the following formulas hold:

(24)

Defining
(16) into (24) gives

and substituting

(20)
(21)
(22)

(25)

(16)

(17)

KANG AND LIAO: DOUBLE-CIRCUIT TRANSMISSION-LINE FAULT LOCATION

Fault location is obtained by simplifying (25) based on the

identity

329

Using (21) and (22), (29) becomes

(30)

(26)
The fault-location formula in (26) is applicable only if a path
exists, which passes through the faulted line and does not pass
any bus more than once, between buses and [24]. Otherwise,
the ratio of voltage changes at these two buses will be constant
and independent of the fault-location variable. Since most of the
power network is interconnected, most combinations are able to
produce the fault-location estimate.
Negative- or zero-sequence voltage measurements, where applicable, can also be employed for fault location. However, positive-sequence voltages are preferred due to the fact that no
fault-type classification is needed.
2) Fault Location With Unsynchronized Measurements From
Two Buses: Taking the absolute value of (25) leads to

By employing (14), (15), (16), and (17), we can formulate

and
from
a nonlinear equation with two unknowns
(30), which can be separated into two real equations. The
NewtonRaphson approach can be adopted to solve for the two
unknown variables. We have chosen [0.5; 0.01] p.u. for and
, respectively, as initial values. The convergence criterion is
that the variable updates become smaller than 1.0e-7 for both
variables. Our evaluation studies show that within 10 iterations,
the algorithm can reach convergence.
3) LL Fault: For the phase-B-to-C fault, the following
boundary conditions hold:
(31)
(32)
Substituting (21) and (32) into (31) results in
(33)

(27)
The NewtonRaphson approach can be utilized here to iteratively solve for the unknown fault location . An initial value of
0.5 p.u. is adopted for the iteration process and the convergence
criterion is that the update for the fault location becomes smaller
than 1.0e-7. As will be illustrated in the evaluation studies, of
all the cases we have tested, all of them have converged within
10 iterations.
B. One-Bus Fault-Location Algorithms
For the scenario where measurements are only available from
a single bus, we have developed one-bus fault-location algorithms for different types of fault. Supposedly, the voltage measurements are from a single bus
.
1) LG Fault: For a phase-A-to-ground fault, the boundary
condition
exists. Eliminating
and
from (21) and (22) yields

where
denotes the prefault positive-sequence voltage at
the fault point and can be calculated as
(34)

and
are the prefault positive-sequence voltwhere
ages at the two terminals of the faulted line and are assumed to
be known.
Using (16), (17), and (34), together with (33), will produce a
as unknowns, the solution of
nonlinear equation with and
which is similar to (30).
4) LLL Fault: For the three-phase balanced fault, we have
(35)
Replacing

in (35) with (20) gives rise to

(28)
(36)
Replacing the transfer impedance terms in (28) by (14) and
(16), a nonlinear equation involving one unknown variable
can be formulated, which can be separated into real and imaginary part to formulate two real equations. To solve it, least
squares method can be utilized. An initial value of 0.5 p.u. for
can be adopted.
2) LLG Fault: For the phase-B-to-C-to-ground fault, the following condition is satisfied:
(29)

A nonlinear formulation with two unknowns

and
can
be derived by substituting (16), (17), and (34) into (36), which
can be solved similar to (30).
Fault-location formulas involving other phases can be deduced similarly.
It should be pointed out that the proposed one-bus method
requires the fault type to be known while the two-bus method
utilizing positive-sequence voltages does not. In addition, it is
assumed that the faulted section can be decided based on relay

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Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the studied system.

operations; otherwise, a list of possible faulted sections can be

attempted.
As for the one-bus method, note that for LLG, LL, and LLL
faults, multiple solutions may be obtained. A solution is defined as a pair of fault-location estimates and fault resistance
estimates. A solution could be a valid solution (
and
) or an invalid solution (
or
or
). An invalid solution can be easily identified and removed. In cases where two or more valid solutions arise, one
is the true solution and the others are erroneous solutions. The
identification of erroneous solutions will be illustrated in case
studies.
IV. OPTIMAL FAULT-LOCATION ESTIMATION CONSIDERING
MEASUREMENT ERRORS
When synchronized voltage measurements at multiple buses
are available, this section presents an optimal fault-location estimator with the ability to detect and identify bad measurements.
A. Proposed Optimal Estimator
Suppose the positive-sequence superimposed voltages caused
are available, which form
by the fault at buses
the following vector:

and
For any two sets of measurements from buses
, the following equation is yielded based on
(25):

(38)
Define the unknown variables as
(39)
where
, variables to represent the
positive-sequence superimposed voltage caused
);
by the fault (i.e.,
fault-location variable.
The combinations of any two sets of measurements out of
sets include
, the total
. Here, represents the combinumber of which is
nation calculation. For any possible combination, say
, by
employing the defined variables, (38) can be written as

(37)
where
is the vector transpose operator, and
number of measurements set.

is the total
(40)

KANG AND LIAO: DOUBLE-CIRCUIT TRANSMISSION-LINE FAULT LOCATION

In total, we can have

equations in the form of (40).
and
as the measurement vector
Let us introduce
is formed as shown
and function vector, respectively.
(41)
(42)
(43)
and produce the magnitude and angle in radiance
where
of the input argument, respectively.
is formulated as follows:

331

B. Detection and Identification of Bad Measurements

To detect the presence of bad measurement data, the method
based on the chi-square test, as illustrated in [27], can be utilized. In this method, the expected value of the cost function
is calculated first, which is equal to the number of degrees of
freedom designated as . Then, the estimated value of the cost
is obtained. If
, then the presence of bad
function
. The value of
can
data is suspected with probability
be calculated for a specific and based on chi-square distribution. If bad data exist, the measurement corresponding to the
largest standardized error will be identified as the bad data. In
our study, we choose to be 0.01, indicating a 99% confidence
level on the detection [27].
V. EVALUATION STUDIES

(44)
where Re(.) and Im(.) yield the real and imaginary part of the
input argument, respectively.
The measurement vector and function vector are related by
(45)
is a vector representing measurement errors and dewhere
pendent on the meter characteristic.
is obtained by minimizing the
The optimal estimate of
cost function defined as
(46)
where
(47)
And
signifies the variance of measurement ,
indicates
the expected value, and
means a diagonal matrix consisting of the values contained in the square bracket.
is the total number of measurements. A smaller value of
indicates a more accurate meter.
Equation (46) can be solved iteratively [27]. During the th
iteration, the unknown vector is updated as
(48)
(49)
(50)
where
iteration number starting from 0;
variable vector before and after the th iteration;
variable update during the th iteration.
To initiate the iteration process, we can choose 0.1 p.u. and
for the magnitude and angle of positive-sequence superimposed voltage, respectively, and 0.5 p.u. for the fault-location
estimate. When the variable update is smaller than the specified
is
tolerance, the iteration process can be terminated. After
obtained, we can use (44) to compute the estimated values of
measurements.

This section presents the evaluation studies for the developed

fault-location algorithms. The Electromagnetic Transients Program (EMTP) has been utilized to simulate the studied power
system with fault conditions of different types, locations, and
fault resistances [28]. The studied power system is a 27-bus,
345-kV, 60-Hz transmission-line system, as shown in Fig. 3
with the line length labeled in miles. The detailed parameters,
including the transmission-line data, generator data, and load
data are listed in Appendix B. The section between buses 9 and
10 possesses the double-circuit line structure, and the fault occurs on one of the parallel lines, with the cross denoting the
fault point. The length of the faulted line is 168.2 miles. The
double-circuit line is modeled in EMTP based on the distributed
parameter line model. The diagram depicting different types of
faults is referred to in [25, p. 478].
The estimation accuracy is evaluated by the percentage error
calculated as
Error

Actual Location Estimated Location

Total Length of Faulted Line

(51)

where the location of the fault is defined as the distance between

the fault point and bus 9.
A. Cases Without Bad Measurements
The developed fault-location algorithms are tested under various fault conditions. In this section, the fault-location results
without bad measurements are presented.
1) Results Considering Transposed Lines: Our fault-location
method is based on the assumption that the lines are fully transposed. In this part, the results when the transmission lines are
perfectly balanced are reported.
Table I shows the fault-location result produced by the
two-bus algorithm. The first three columns represent the actual
fault type, fault location, and fault resistance, respectively. The
rest indicate the percentage errors of fault-location estimates
utilizing synchronized voltage measurements from two buses.
Table II exhibits the percentage fault-location errors using
unsynchronized measurements from two buses. Various fault
resistances have been utilized in the simulation studies, and
representative results are reported here.
In Tables I and II, positive-sequence voltage measurements
are used to carry out two-bus fault location. The fault-location
results are quite satisfactory. It can be observed that quite close

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TABLE I
TWO-BUS SYNCHRONIZED FAULT-LOCATION RESULTS

fault-location estimates are produced by using synchronized and

unsynchronized data. It must be noticed that there are restrictions in choosing the two buses on account of the reasons explained in Section III. For example, it is impossible to produce
a fault-location estimate by employing voltage measurements
from bus combinations, such as 4 and 5, 10 and 11, 11 and 22,
etc.
Table III presents the one-bus fault location results for AG and
BCG faults. Columns 47 display the percentage errors of faultlocation estimate, employing the voltage measurements from a
single bus. It can be seen that the fault-location estimates are
quite accurate.
For the BCG fault, under certain fault conditions, multiple
valid solutions might arise, where only one solution is true.
The erroneous solutions can be identified by the following
method. We can calculate the voltages of the bus with measurements from all of the valid solutions by making use of the bus
impedance matrix and compare them with the actual voltage
measurements. The bus voltages computed from the erroneous
solution differ from the original measurements and, thus, the
erroneous solution can be recognized.
Table IV conveys the one-bus fault location results for BC and
ABC faults. Columns 3 to the end list the estimated fault loca-

TABLE II
TWO-BUS UNSYNCHRONIZED FAULT-LOCATION RESULTS

TABLE III
ONE-BUS FAULT-LOCATION RESULTS FOR AG AND BCG FAULTS

tion and fault resistance by utilizing voltage measurements from

a single bus. The actual fault resistance is 1 (0.00084 p.u.) and
the base value of the impedance is 1190.25 .

KANG AND LIAO: DOUBLE-CIRCUIT TRANSMISSION-LINE FAULT LOCATION

TABLE IV
ONE-BUS FAULT-LOCATION RESULTS FOR BC AND ABC FAULTS

333

TABLE V
TWO-BUS SYNCHRONIZED FAULT-LOCATION RESULTS
FOR UNTRANSPOSED LINES

TABLE VI
ONE-BUS AG FAULT-LOCATION RESULTS FOR UNTRANSPOSED LINES

As observed from Table IV, the one-bus algorithms for BC

and ABC faults are able to yield a quite accurate fault-location
estimate; however, under certain fault conditions, two valid solutions can be produced. Only one of them is the correct solution and the erroneous one is indicated by . For example,
when the actual fault location of a BC fault is 0.5 p.u., using
the voltages from bus 6, two valid solutions (0.50, 0.00088) p.u.
and (0.83, 0.00295) p.u. are yielded with the first element representing the fault-location estimate and the second one representing the fault resistance estimate. Here, the second solution
is erroneous, whose estimated fault location is followed by .
When two valid solutions are yielded, our studies indicate
that it is not possible to tell which one is the true solution by
utilizing only the voltage measurements at one bus. This is because based on short-circuit analysis, both fault conditions corresponding to the two solutions will yield the same voltage phasors as the measured ones. Hence, unless more measurements
are available, there may be more than one likely fault-location estimate. Adequacy of measurement data to pinpoint the
unique true fault location for a given network may be determined through an analysis called fault-location observability
and meter placement, which will be performed in the future.
2) Results Considering Untransposed Lines: In this part, the
impact of untransposition of lines is studied. For the untransposed double-circuit line, we have averaged the relevant terms
in the series impedance matrix to obtain the self impedance, the
mutual impedance of the phases within the same single circuit,
and the mutual impedance between the phases from two single
circuits. From these parameters, we can further calculate the sequence parameters which will be utilized in the fault-location
algorithm [28]. Shunt admittance is dealt with similarly.
Tables V and VI show the fault-location results using synchronized two-bus and one-bus algorithms for the AG fault, respectively. The faulted double-circuit line is untransposed in the
simulation model. Compared to the results in Tables I and III,
we can observe that the estimates are generally not as accurate
as transposed line cases but are still quite accurate.
3) Impact of Zero-Sequence Line Parameter Error: The accuracy of zero-sequence line parameters may be of concern due
to the uncertainty of earth resistivity. We have applied a certain error to the zero-sequence impedance of the double-circuit line between buses 9 and 10. The AG fault location results with 3% error in zero-sequence impedances are reported

TABLE VII
ONE-BUS AG FAULT-LOCATION RESULTS WITH 3%
ERROR IN ZERO-SEQUENCE IMPEDANCES

in Table VII. The fault-location accuracy has decreased compared to Table III. However, the errors are still quite small. Note
that only the one-bus algorithm involving ground is affected by
zero-sequence parameter errors, since two-bus methods will use
positive-sequence parameters.
B. Case With Bad Measurement
This case study illustrates how to detect and identify bad measurements with the proposed optimal estimator. A value of 1e-6
is chosen as variance for the first
measurements and 1e-4
for the variance for the voltage measurements. In our studied
case, the voltage measurements at buses 4, 6, 8, and 19 are utilized to obtain the fault location.
Suppose there is a BCG fault with the actual fault location
being 0.3 p.u. and the fault resistance as 50 . Suppose that
there is an error of 50% in the superimposed positive-sequence
voltage at bus 4.
The optimal estimation result is shown in Table VIII. There
are 20 equations and 9 state variables; therefore, we have
11 and
24.73. The estimated value of cost function
is computed as 34.58, which is greater than
. Thus,
the presence of bad measurements is suspected. Following the
method outlined in Section IV-B, the normalized error vector

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TABLE VIII
OPTIMAL ESTIMATES WITH BAD MEASUREMENT

TABLE IX
OPTIMAL ESTIMATES WITH BAD MEASUREMENT REMOVED

one-bus and two-bus fault-location algorithms if more than

three sets of measurements are available. If only two sets of
measurements are captured, the two-bus fault-location algorithm should be chosen. However, the one-bus fault-location
algorithm still provides an effective solution for the scenario
when measurements are only available from a single bus.
We should emphasize that the existing fault-location methods
certainly provide good estimates if measurements are available
from terminals of the faulted line. The proposed methods serve
to complement existing approaches in cases where existing
methods are not applicable. In comparison to the authors
previous work [24], the contributions of this paper include
fully considering shunt capacitances by using a distributed line
model and presenting an optimal fault-location estimator for
enhanced accuracy.
APPENDIX
A. Derivation of

is obtained and the largest value corresponds to the magnitude of superimposed positive-sequence voltage at bus 4, which
is hence identified as a bad measurement.
After the bad measurement is removed, a new set of optimal
estimates is calculated as shown in Table IX. In this scenario,
the expected value of cost function is equal to 5 and
15.09. The estimated value of cost function
is 6e-4. Since
is much less than
, all of the data are considered fairly
accurate and the estimates are regarded as satisfactory. A comparison of Table VIII indicates that the fault-location accuracy
has considerably improved.

Referring to Fig. 2, let us inject a current source of 1 A to bus

. Let
denote the currents flowing from bus to and ,
denote the currents flowing from bus to
respectively, and
and , respectively. Making use of the bus impedance matrix
in (13), we obtain
(A1)
It follows from Fig. 2 that:
(A2)
(A3)
(A4)

VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, novel one-bus and two-bus fault-location algorithms applicable to double-circuit transmission lines are developed. The distinctive feature of the proposed method is that only
voltage measurements from one or two buses are needed which
may be a distance away from the faulted section. The distributed
parameter line model is utilized which fully takes the shunt capacitance of long lines into account.
Simulation studies have shown that the proposed algorithms
can yield quite accurate estimates under various fault conditions. For the two-bus fault-location method, a unique fault-location estimate is produced by using synchronized and unsynchronized voltage measurements, and the fault-type classification is not required. For one-bus fault-location algorithms, the
fault type is a prerequisite. For LG and LLG faults, a unique
fault-location estimate can be obtained. For LL and LLL faults,
prefault measurements at the two terminals of the faulted line
are demanded and, in certain cases, two possible fault-location
estimates may be produced, both of which will be treated as a
likely fault location.
When synchronized voltage measurements from multiple
(more than three) buses are available, which may not necessarily be captured from the buses of the faulted line, an
optimal fault-location estimator is proposed that is capable of
identifying bad measurement data and, thus, enhancing the
fault-location estimate. This approach is preferred over the

and

(A5)
(A6)
(A7)
Based

on

(A2)(A7), there are six unknowns

and six equations, from which
can be solved as follows:
(A8)
where

(A9)

(A10)

KANG AND LIAO: DOUBLE-CIRCUIT TRANSMISSION-LINE FAULT LOCATION

335

TABLE X
TRANSMISSION-LINE DATA

TABLE XI
GENERATOR DATA

TABLE XII
LOAD DATA

(A17)

(A18)
With six unknown variables
(A13)(A18) reaches the expression of

, solving
as follows:

(A11)
(A19)
Substituting (A1) into (A8) will result in (14).
To derive
, let us inject one current source of 1 A into
bus . Based on the bus impedance matrix in (13), the voltages
at buses , , and in Fig. 2 are

where

(A12)
(A20)
From Fig. 2, the following equations hold:
(A13)
(A14)

(A15)
(A16)

Substituting (A12) into (A19) yields (15).

B. Studied 27-Bus System Data
This section provides the model data of the studied 27-bus
system. The per-unit system is adopted with a base voltage of
345 kV and base volt-ampere of 100 MVA. The transmissionline data, generator data, and load data are listed in Tables X
XII, respectively.
In Table X, the first two columns are the two bus numbers for
each branch. The per-unit length positive-sequence impedance,

336

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 27, NO. 1, JANUARY 2012

zero-sequence impedance, positive-sequence susceptance and

zero-sequence susceptance for each branch are listed.
The per-unit length zero-sequence mutual series impedance
of the parallel lines between bus 9 and 10 is

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The per-unit length zero-sequence mutual-shunt susceptance

of the parallel lines between buses 9 and 10 is 0.0027 p.u.
In Table XI, the first column represents the bus number that
the generator is connected to. Columns 23 show the positiveand zero-sequence source impedance.
In Table XII, the first column represents the bus number that
the load is connected to. The second column exhibits the equivalent load impedance.
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Ning Kang (M10) received the B.Sc. degree in

electrical engineering from Xian Jiaotong University, Xian, China, in 2004 and the Ph.D. degree from
the University of Kentucky, Lexington, in 2010.
Currently, she is a Senior R&D Engineer with
ABB Corporate Research Center, Raleigh, NC. Her
research interests include protection, power-quality
analysis, and large-scale resource scheduling
optimization.

Yuan Liao (S98M00SM05) is an Associate

Professor with the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, University of Kentucky,
Lexington. He was an R&D Consulting Engineer
and then Principal R&D Consulting Engineer with
ABB Corporate Research Center, Raleigh, NC. His
research interests include protection, power-quality
analysis, large-scale resource scheduling optimization, and network-management system/supervisory
control and data-acquisition system design.