Application of Smart Meters in High Impedance Fault Detection on Distribution Systems

This paper presents a novel application of smart meters (SMs) in the high impedance fault (HIF) detection in distribution systems. Detection of HIF on distribution systems poses a significant challenge to the protection engineers. Existing HIF detection methods primarily use measurements available at distribution substations. Lack of availability of measurements near the fault points often makes HIF detection further difficult. The proposed method utilizes the voltage measurements of SMs to address this issue. HIF detection in the presence of nonlinear loads is another challenge. The proposed method detects HIF depending on the amount of even harmonics present in the voltage waveforms measured by SMs. The performance of the proposed method has been evaluated using both PSCAD simulations and experimental set-up. The proposed method has also been implemented on a commercial energy meter to show its viability. The performance of the proposed method has also been evaluated considering HIF, voltage sag-swells, capacitor/load switching, transformer energization, feeder energization, power electronic loads, arc furnace loads, and distributed generators. The proposed method performs satisfactorily in the investigated scenarios. The performance of the proposed method has also been compared with the existing HIF detection methods.