TRANSIENT PROTECTION OF TRANSMISSION LINE USING WAVELET TRANSFORM
M Solanki'", Y H Song('), S Potts(2),A Perks")
'"Brunel University, UK i2) Alstom Protection and Control, UK
Abstract: This paper presents a new approach to
developing protection techniques for EHV overhead
transmission lines. When a fault occurs, the fault current
and voltage waveforms contain significant high frequency
transient signals. The presented method is based on the
detection of fault generated transient signals using wavelet
analysis. The simulation study is carried out, using ATP-
EMTP and wavelet analysis, which indicates that the
proposed approach has the potential of developing high
speed protection relays with accurate fault detection and
classification.
Introduction
The main function of digital relays in power system is to
reduce the consequences of faults by fault detection,
localization and clearance of faults. The main power
signal analysis tools, which are currently used in the
digital relay, have proven very useful and efficient in
power system steady state analysis. Among these are (1)
Kalman filtering based algorithms, (2) Fourier analysis
based algorithms, (3) Least squares methods based
algorithms and (4) FIR filtering based protection.
However in, presence of non-stationary signals, the
performance of these techniques is limited.
A more recent solution to the problem is the wavelet
transform. F Jiang et a1 ( 1 ) states that the wavelet analysis
has the capability of providing accurate transient
information in both time and frequency domain. The
current and voltage signals obtained from a transmission
line when a fault occurs have long duration low frequency
components and short duration high frequency
components. Wavelet transforms appear to offer the right
characteristics to analyze the information contained in
these signals for the purpose of line protection. Wavelet
transform has a special feature of variable time-frequency
localization, which is very different from windowed
.Fourier pansform. This feature can be explored as an
alternative to the methods mentioned above.
This paper presents a technique to detect and classify
faults on EHV overhead transmission line. The wavelet
transform is applied to decompose the current signals into
a series of detailed wavelet components, each of which is
a time-domain signal that covers a specific frequency
band. Thus the time and frequency domain features of the
transient signals are extracted. The spectral energies of
Developments in Power System Protection, Conference Publication No.479 0 IEE 2001 .
Source1 B u A B ~ Source2
B
b
190 km
Figure 1: system configuration
the wavelet components are calculated and then employed
to detect and classify the faults.
Simulation of Faulted Transmission System
An extensive series of simulation studies have been
carried out to obtain various fault signals for subsequent
analysis. I
A typical 400 kV power transmission line system is
shown in figure 1. The simulation of this system, was
carried out using ATP-EMTP software and it included
study of system for different fault types, fault positions
and different fault inception angles.
Wavelet Transform
The wavelet transform is a recently developed
mathematical tool for signal analysis. It has become a
very important tool for research in the field of
mathematics, physics and engineering. It transforms a
time domain signal to time-scale domain. This process of
transformation is called signal decomposition because a
signal is decomposed into several other signals with
different level of resolution. From these decomposed
signals, it is possible to recover the original time domain
signal perfectly. This reverse process is known as signal
reconstruction.
Given a signal or a function x(t), its Continuous Wavelet
Transform (CWT) is defined as follows:
1 " t-b
C W x ( a , b )= J=&p)r(-)dt U (1)
Where a and b are the scaling (dilation) and translation
(time shift) parameters respectively and y/ is the mother
wavelet function. Goswami J C & Chan A K (2) states
299
that the choice of the mother wavelet function is flexible reconstruction is also performed using the filter bank
provided that it satisfies the admissibility conditions. approach similar to the decomposition but in reverse
There are many mother wavelet functions available and order. Figure 3 shows the reconstruction of c o [ n ] .
they have different properties. The selection of mother Mathematically it can be written as:
wavelet depends on the given application.
k
d, [n]The wavelet transform has a digitally
implementable counter part, the Discrete Wavelet
Transform (DWT). The DWT of x (k) is defined as:

S
d , [n]Where the asterisk denotes a complex conjugate,
the parameters a and b in Eq.( 1) are replaced by digitised
parameters a: and k a r , also k and m are scale and
time-shift parameters. The above transformation is
performed by dilating the mother wavelet by a factor of c1[nl dSn1
two and hence it is also known as dyadic transformation. Figure 2 Wavelet decomposition of a signal

Misti M et al ( 3 ) states that the implementation of the

c, En1 dl [nl
discrete wavelet transform using a filter bank is
computationally very efficient. Refer. to figure 2. First,
the original discrete signal co[n]is decomposed into two
components, c, [n] and d ,[n] by a low-pass filter h[n]
and a high-pass filter g [ n ] , respectively. In fact, these
two filters connect the so-called 'quadrature mirror filters
(QMF) which is familiar to engineers. So the fast
transform (or multiresolution analysis) is an orthonormal
decomposition of the signal. c, [n], called the CO [nl
approximation of the signal, contains the lower frequency Figure 3 Wavelet reconstruction of a signal
components of the signal c o [ n ]while
, d , [ n ], called the
detail of the signal, contains the high frequency of the Wavelet Analysis of Fault Current Signal
c o [ n ] . Next, the approximation cl[n] is again
When a ground fault occurs, the measured current
decomposed into a new approximation c2[n]and a detail waveforms contain significant transient components.
d , [ n ] in at larger scale. Then c 2 [ n ]can be decomposed Figure 4 shows a simulated a-g fault current waveform.
to third scale, and this process can be repeated many The a-g fault occurs at time 0.025 seconds. For the
discrete wavelet analysis of the signal there are many
times. Mathematically cl[n] and d , [ n ] are defined as
wavelets available with different properties. More
follows: information can be found in Misti M et al (3).

For the protection relaying purposes the wavelet should

(4)
The implementation of signal reconstruction is fairly
straightforward. Strang G and Nguyen T (4) states that
the original signal c,[n] can be reconstructed perfectly
by using the approximations and details of it. Signal
have properties like availability of discrete transform,
compact support, FIR filter implementation, fast algorithm
and orthogonal or biorthogonal analysis. For real time
relaying purposes the speed of algorithm and easy
computation are very important. Since the wavelets,
Mexican hat, Morlet and Meyer do not have discrete
transform and fast algorithm implementation, so they were
not considered. The wavelets designed by Daubechies
have the properties required so they were investigated

300
 using Matlab s wavelet toolbox.
be found in Daubechies (5).
Current (A)
6000 1
More information can asymmetric and Symmetry is a very desirable property in
signal processing applications because it leads to linear
phase response. The current signal was analyzed using
the three level discrete wavelet transform, which was
implemented in Matlab with the Sym2 wavelet and the
1 results are shown in figures 5 , 6 , 7 and 8.

Coeff value

Time(s)
Figure 4 The a-g fault current waveform -2OOL I
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
Time(s)
Figure 5 Detail 1 ( d, [ n ]) for fault current signal
Coeff value

Wavelet flops Wavelet flops -200

Db 1 7387 Biorl. 1 8035 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
Db2 13561 Biorl.3 20833 Time(s)
I Db3 I 20293 I Biorl.5 I 36133 I Figure 6 Detail 2 ( d, [n]) for a-g fault current signal
Db4 28339 Bior2.2 21 103
Db5 36277 B ior2.4 36547 Coeff value
Db6 46123 Bior2.6 55105
Db7 5595 1 Bior2.8 76336
Db8 67669 Bior3. 1 14479 4000 @
Db9 784 15 Bior3.3 29059
DblO 92014 Bior3.5 46069

Coif5
Haar
167011
7225
13561
Bior6.8
sym5
Sym6
78442
36277
46123
-2000
-4000
1I
sym2
sym3 20293 sym7 5595 1 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
sym4 28339 Sym8 67669 Time(s)
Figure 7 Detail 3 ( d , [n]) for a-g fault current signal

301
Coeff value
1;’O
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
Time(s)
Figure 8 Approximation3 ( C, [n]) for a-g fault current
From figures 5, 6, 7 and 8 it can be seen that the fault
generates big spikes in the coefficient values (Coeff
value), which can be used to detect and classify the faults.
The coefficient values before the fault occurs are near
zero but after the fault occurs the coefficient values jump
to a value. The actual value is dependent on the fault
condition. The coefficient values represent the spectral
energy of the signal. Abur A and Magnago (6) states that
the energy of switching transients is negligible compared
to the energy of the signals produced by a fault.
From the extensive analysis of many different signals, it
was found that the coefficient values for the fault signals
were much higher for the fault signals than the other
transient signals without fault. Also the coefficient values
for the faulty phase is much higher than the other phases
without fault. From these results a threshold can be set to
detect the faults and the details and approximations can be
compared to identify the ground faults. The proposed
algorithm for detecting and classifying the ground fault is
shown in Figure 9. The fault signal from current
transformers are sampled ,first, then three level discrete
wavelet is carried out, which generates details and
approximation of the signal at three different levels. Then
Coefficient values are compared with threshold values. If
they exceed the threshold, the trip signal is sent. The fault
classification can be carried out by comparing the details
and approximation coefficients of signals of all three
phases.
Conclusions
A wavelet based approach is presented in this paper,
which can be used for detecting and classifying faults on
302
Data Sampling
I
Calculation of
wavelet coeffs I
j Yes
Fault classification
Figure 9 Flow-chart for wavelet algorithm
EHV transmission line. After detailed analysis of the
properties of different mother wavelets, in particular their
computation speed and symmetry, mother wavelet Sym2
tumed out to be the best candidate for the given
application. The details and approximations up to three
levels obtained from the wavelet decomposition of the
current signals are used to detect and classify the faults.
Numerical studies clearly show promising prospects for
the application of wavelet analysis in power system
protection. Work is on-going for fkrther developing the
approach into protection algorithms.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Alstom Protection and
Control & EPSRC (UK) for financial support.
References:
1. F Jiang, Bo Z Q, Weller G, Redfem M A and Chen Z,
2000, “ Application of Wavelet in transient protection
- review” UPEC 2000 CD-ROM
2. Goswami J C., and Chan A K., 1999,
“ Fundamentals of wavelets”, John Wiley & Sons Inc.
3. Misti M, Misti Y, Oppenheim G and Poggi J M 1996
“ Wavelet toolbox user guide”, The Mathworks Inc.
4. Strang G and Nguyen T., 1997
“Wavelets and Filter Banks”, Wellesly-Cambridge
Press.
5. Daubechies I, 1992
“ Ten Lectures on Wavelets”, Siam, Philadelphia PA
6. Abur A and Magnago F H., 2000, “Use of time delays
between modal components in wavelet based fault
location”Electrica1 Power & Energy Systems, 397-
403