A Novel Approach to Arcing Faults Characterization Using Multivariable Analysis and Support Vector Machine

Based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standard C37.104-2012 Power Systems Relaying Committee report, topics related to auto-reclosing in transmission lines have been considered as an imperative benefit for electric power systems. An important issue in reclosing, when performed correctly, is identifying the fault type, i.e., permanent or temporary, which keeps the faulted transmission line in service as long as possible. In this paper, a multivariable analysis was used to classify signals as permanent and temporary faults. Thus, by using a simple convolution process among the mother functions called eigenvectors and the fault signals from a single end, a dimensionality reduction was determined. In this manner, the feature classifier based on the support vector machine was used for acceptably classifying fault types. The algorithm was tested in different fault scenarios that considered several distances along the transmission line and representation of first and second arcs simulated in the alternative transients program ATP software. Therefore, the main contribution of the analysis performed in this paper is to propose a novel algorithm to discriminate permanent and temporary faults based on the behavior of the faulted phase voltage after single-phase opening of the circuit breakers. Several simulations let the authors conclude that the proposed algorithm is effective and reliable.