Faulted Line-Section Location in Distribution System With Inverter-Interfaced DGs Using Sparse Meters

This paper proposes a faulted line-section location method using sparse meters for the distribution networks (DNs) with high penetration of inverter interfaced distributed generations (IIDGs). By modeling the IIDGs as equivalent impedances instead of current sources, the fault component model of the DN with IIDGs can be transferred from a multi-current feeding system towards the sole-current feeding system. On this basis, the Bayesian Compressed Sensing (BCS) algorithm is applied to achieve the sparse solution of the fault current to indicate the faulted line-section. Moreover, to reduce the required meters for monitoring the IIDGs, a node partition scheme is designed based on the analysis of IIDG with different control strategies. The proposed fault location method requires only 15 meters for an IEEE 69-node distribution network with 20 IIDGs. Simulation results show that the location success rate is beyond 95% for various fault scenarios which is a 55% improvement over the existing BCS-based method.