A novel fault isolation scheme in power system with dynamic topology using wide-area information

A novel fault isolation scheme in a power system based on wide-area information is proposed. Based on graph theory, the adjacency matrices for electrical components and circuit breakers are set up. To achieve this new scheme of fault isolation on a complex network, the wide-area switch status information is used. The real-time fault isolation set for each protected electrical component is obtained according to the changeable power network structures. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is tested on a power system with the typical main electrical connection under a single fault, multiple faults, circuit breaker failure, and substation with the outage of DC power supply, and given the circumstances under which the circuit breakers cannot trip. Since the tripping sequence of circuit breakers is detected before the fault occurs, even with dynamic changes of power system conditions, the fault isolation zone can be minimized with lower fault clearance time.