A voltage phasor based fault-classification method for phasor measurement unit only state estimator output

This article presents a fault-classification method for transmission lines based on voltage phasors using classification and regression trees. The proposed method is intended to aid system operators in understanding the outputs of a phasor measurement unit only state estimator. Faults are classified into four categories when the estimator is positive sequence and into ten categories when the estimator is three phase. The fault data are generated in PowerWorld® (PowerWorld Corporation, Champaign, IL, USA) and DSA Tools® (Powertech Labs Inc., Surrey, British Columbia, Canada). The pre-fault state consists of a variety of operating conditions and loading angles of faulted lines. The fault condition comprises different fault types, fault locations, fault impedances, and fault incidence angles. Fault classification is done using MATLAB® (The MathWorks, Natick, Massachusetts, USA).The approach is successfully tested on the IEEE-118 bus system. The results demonstrate that the technique developed here is effective and robust, irrespective of the pre-fault and fault conditions.