A Recursive Method for Traveling-Wave Arrival-Time Detection in Power Systems

This paper proposes a novel recursive method for detecting the first arrival time (AT) of traveling waves (TWs) in power grids to enhance the fault-location methods relying on TWs. This method depends on the adaptive discrete Kalman filter. It estimates the parameters of a high time-resolution voltage or current measurement and generates residuals (innovation sequence). Both measurement noises and TWs can result in an abrupt change in the residuals. The proposed method pinpoints the probable abrupt change and distinguishes whether it is caused by noises or arriving waves. As the proposed method is recursive, it is proper for implementation in on-site digital fault locators for real-time applications. For evaluation of the proposed method, EMTP-RV and the real-time digital simulator are utilized to perform the transient simulations. The results are then analyzed in MATLAB. The proposed method and the state-of-the-art AT-detection methods in the prior literature are compared, and the sensitivity analysis demonstrates that the measurement noises and fault parameters have less influence on the proposed method efficiency in comparison to the existing AT-detection methods.