A grounded system can be quite unbalanced when a major single phase load is out of service.

To avoid false tripping the setting of conventional earth fault current protection relay is set above the maximum foreseeable unbalance. Thus, neutral over current protections that use the fundamental component of currents are ineffective in detecting HIFs. Some HIFs generate virtually no fault current. Hence devices in substation cannot detect these HIFs. It is therefore impossible to design a substation based detection device to detect all HIFs and downed conductor conditions.

HIFs are random and dynamic. An arcing conductor may not lie still on a ground surface, but may move around as a result of electromagnetic force. From the lengthy history of HIF detection research and technologies applied, we can sense the difficulty and complexity involved in designing an HIF detection algorithm that is both fairly dependable and cent percent secure against false alarms. It is relatively easy to design an algorithm that detects certain HIFs, but it is challenging to make the same algorithm secure.

The communication schemes are extremely useful for detecting the loss of potential on a distribution line, and this can be made use considering the cost-effectiveness. The availability of powerful microprocessors and signal processing algorithms has led to a wide range of new techniques to identify the waveforms associated with high impedance faults.