Design and Development of Fault Detection and

Location System for Electrical Distribution Network

Syed Sheraz-ul-Hasan Mohani Muhammad Shoaib Ameer Atif Jabbar
Faculty of Engineering Sciences and Faculty of Engineering Sciences and Faculty of Engineering Sciences and
Technology Technology Technology
Iqra University Iqra University Iqra University
Karachi, Pakistan Karachi, Pakistan Karachi, Pakistan
smohani@iqra.edu.pk shoaibameer33@gmail.com atifjabbar@outlook.com

Abstract— this low cost fault detection and locating system

is especially valuable in rural environments where crews have
long drive times or in a building with complex distribution
network. These devices can make a huge financial impact by
removing operational costs and allowing utilities to deliver
safe, affordable and reliable energy.

Keywords—Fault location, Fault detection, SIM908

(GSM/GPS/GPRS), Arduino, Lab VIEW

Fig. 1. Simplified model of impedance based locators

I. INTRODUCTION
Since the establishment of electrical distribution B. Travelling wave based locators
networks, fault location and detection has been a primary Traveling wave-based fault location methods can be
aspect of power systems. To prevent any major damage to divided into two-terminal and one-terminal. With traveling
the equipment, fault detection helps to save them by wave analysis, however, one-terminal methods rely on the
disconnecting faulted lines. Faults can be easily eliminated timing between reflections of voltage or current at
by accurately locating fault occurring areas which also helps impedance discontinuities – in this case, the fault – to find
in lowering power outage frequency. This system is designed the distance between the sensor and the fault while two-
to effectively and more accurately perform this task. terminal methods work based on the time delay between
Fault Detection and Location system will provide arrivals of information at the ends of the transmission line.
distribution monitoring in real - time. It will be an affordable
solution that will be deployable in minutes. The FDL system
consists of microcontroller, current and potential
transformers, electrically controlled breakers, liquid crystal
display (LCD), 24V battery, GSM/GPS modem and antenna,
personal computer (PC), some small logic and inverter
circuits (Hardware equipment) and lab view, Arduino IDE
(Software tools).

II. TECHNOLOGY HISTORY

The safe operation of electrical power systems
(distribution and transmission networks) is guaranteed by the
accurate fault detection. Programmed fault elimination from
distribution or transmission lines would be impossible
without fault detection. As a result, crucial electrical
equipment could be destroyed or damaged. It is not
necessary to have fault detection and location system for
power system safety, but it can help to detect areas where
faults have occurred on distribution or transmission
networks.
Many fault location techniques have been designed in
past years. Systems which are used commonly include
A. Impedance based locators
Impedance based locators are used to locate the distance
of fault from primary supply to the fault location by
measuring current and voltages using one-end or two-end
locators. These values are then fed to the mathematical
equations for estimation of fault location.
Fig. 2. Traveling wave based locators
C. Knowledge based locators
Knowledge based methods are used to reduce the time
taken by impedance based locators by pre-calculating the set
of data and matching it the current impedance. The area of
knowledge based approaches falls under soft computing.
Many artificial intelligence methods are used to compute the
fault location which includes but not limited to Artificial
Neural network (ANN), Fuzzy Logic (FL), Expert System
(ES) and Genetic Algorithm (GA), etc. In soft computing the
restrictions are looser and the possibilities to find complex
correlations higher but the accuracy and certainty comes with
a cost, which result in a trade of between precision and
uncertainty

978-1-5386-8249-4/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

 The Following tables show the requirements and Hardware Description
advantages and disadvantages of locators mentioned above.
D. System Model

Fig. 3. System Model

Figure 3 shows the working block diagram of the project.
Table 1. Requirements of different locators FDL master device present in a control room of grid station
with a Lab view GUI interface and FDL slave device were
installed on the pole for fault detection working. FDL
master and slave devices communicate using
GSM/GPS/GPRS communication link through short message
service (SMS).

E. FDL Master Device

Table 2. Accuracy and cost comparison of locators Fig. 4. Block diagram of FDL Master Device
Master device comprises of a PC/laptop with a modem to
communicate with slave devices. The modem is connected
with PC through USB port . The modem consists of
GPS/GSM/GPRS and a passive antenna for GSM and an
active antenna for GPS. We used lab view program as hyper
terminal to communicate with modem. The DTE (Data
Terminal Equipment) which in our case is a PC is set on a
baud rate of 9600 to communicate with DCE (Data
Communication Equipment) and in DCE auto bauding is set.

F. FDL Slave Device

Fig. 5 Block diagram of FDL Slave Device

Table 3. Detailed comparison of locators

 The slave devices have all the circuits need to detect
fault and locate it. We used Arduino UNO as platform for
this device to measure the parameters and to control the
device and a modem is used to communicate with master
device. It also consists of three potential transformers to step
down the line voltage up to 1.5 VAC which after measure
through A/D converter which is built-in with Arduino.

Fig. 6. FDL Slave Device Circuits

Other circuits in slave device include an AC

measurement circuit, LCD circuit, Battery cut off and battery
charging circuit, Circuit Breaker control circuit, logic
converter circuit which converts 3.3 volts to 5 or vice versa,
24 VDC testing circuit (Receive and transmit), 5 VDC (4
Amps) high current power supply, two 12 V batteries
connected in series and other miscellaneous things like
LCD, GSM antenna (passive), GPS antenna (active),
Electrically controlled Circuit Breakers, Exhaust fan and a
power button.

III. SOFTWARE DESCRIPTION

A basic algorithm to implement fault location and
detection method on microcontroller is as follows:
Lab View (Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation
Engineering Workbench) is software from National
Instruments, which is used for visual programming language.
In this project we used lab view as GUI (Graphical User
Interface) to monitor the status of fault and to control the
FDL devices from remote.
 IV. RESULTS V. CONCLUSION
Lab view environment was tested by sending and Overall conclusion of this paper is to give a brief idea of
receiving messages from a mobile to GSM module ac voltage fault detection and to find fault location. This
connected to pc paper gives an idea of measuring ac voltages and taking a
decision on its condition as well as to integrate sim908
gsm/gprs/gps modem by using microcontroller and easily
available components. There are number of uses of sim908
modems in industries for transmitting location and sensor
data from remote location an intelligent system. This system
is designed especially for the power distribution companies
but this can also applicable in industries which have a length
of cables running in the field. Few major component and
ideas used in this project are as follow;

a) A C voltage measurement
b) Using GS M t o communicate
c) Using GPS to find location
d) Using Google maps to display location.

Fig. 7. LABView GUI in normal mode Advantages of project as compared to other approaches
include:
a) Easy installation
b) Plug and play support
c) Portability
d) No significant hardware changes required in existing
setup
e) Low cost maintenance
f) Parts availibility
g) Modular device, can add more functionalities in
future

Demerits of project includes:

a) Security issue due to hacking but GSM is very much
hack proof
Fig. 8. LABView GUI when fault occured b) Signal jamming issue but can be mitigated by using
redundant frequency and protocols

REFERENCES
[1] Kurt Josef Ferreira, Fault Location for Power Transmission Systems
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[6] with time domain reflectometry." AFRICON, 2004. 7th AFRICON
Conference in Africa. Vol. 1. IEEE, 2004.
Fig. 9. LABView GUI after fault location has been identified
[7] http://www.tequipment.net/megger/tdr-and-cable-length-meters
[8] Gilany, Mahmoud, Doaa Khalil Ibrahim, and ES Tag Eldin.
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