An Optimization-Accelerated Electromagnetic Time Reversal-based Fault Location Method for Power Lines with Branches

TL;DR

This paper introduces an optimized electromagnetic time reversal method combined with simulated annealing and graph theory to rapidly and accurately locate short-circuit faults in complex power line networks with branches.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach that accelerates EMTR fault location using optimization and topology decomposition, improving speed and reliability over traditional methods.

Findings

Location speed improved by up to ten times

Method effectively handles complex branched networks

Numerical experiments confirm reliability and efficiency

Abstract

It is very important to locate the short-circuit fault in a power system quickly and accurately. Electromagnetic time reversal (EMTR) has drawn increasing attention because of its clear physical background and excellent performance. This paper studies the EMTR method for locating the short-circuit fault of transmission and distribution lines with or without branches, and introduces a simulated annealing algorithm to accelerate the calculation of an EMTR fault location. This algorithm is different from the traditional exhaustive method in that it solves the corresponding optimization problem, thus improving the location speed by up to an order of magnitude. With the help of graph theory, a method is proposed that automatically splits a complex line topology with branches into several one-dimensional lines. The problem of short-circuit fault location in the branching lines is then transformed into several one-dimensional optimization problems, which are then solved by the optimization algorithm. This solves the problem of realizing rapid location in a power network with branches. Numerical experiments are carried out in a distribution network model to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Results under different conditions show the method works reliably and efficiently.