Fault Location System for Power Transmission Lines

Applying Optical Fiber Current Sensors

Kiyoshi Kurosawa,1 and Kazuo Amano 2

Surge-receiving-type fault location systems have recently been used for fast recovery of
underground transmission lines from ground faults. Electromagnetic induction type sensors
have mainly been used for detection of surge currents. However, they are susceptible to
electromagnetic noise, which causes unstable system operation. To solve this problem, we
developed a new system using optical fiber current sensors.

1.Introduction phase. Local stations send the surge data based on the
Fault location is needed on power transmission lines surge current waveform produced by the optical fiber
where high reliability is important. Accurate and con- current sensors to the master station. In the master
sistent fault location for ground faults have to be noti- station, the fault location is pinpointed based on infor-
fied in a control room or engineering center where the mation received from local stations. Specifications of
information is needed to direct maintenance teams fault location system are shown in Table 1.
and shorten outage time. Therefore, we have devel- Principles of the fault location are described below.
oped the fault location system using optical fiber cur- When a ground fault occurs on the cable, the current
rent sensors1)2). In the system, fault current surge is surge travels from the fault point in directions toward
detected with the sensors attached to the power lines, both ends of the cable. The propagation velocity is
usually set at the both ends, and surge detection time some 50% to 60% the speed of light and the difference
is measured with satellite signals such as GPS. between times of the current surge arrival to local sta-
Fault location is calculated from surge arrival time tions is proportional to distances between the fault
difference between the sensors. Electromagnetic in- point and the optical fiber current sensors. By accu-
duction type sensors have mainly been used for detec- rately measuring these times by a GPS clock, the fault
tion of the surge current. location can be determined depending on the differ-
The sensor becomes tubular, and is compact and ence between the surge arrival times. Namely, the
flexible. However, they are susceptible to electromag- distance X to the fault point from the substation A can
netic noise, which causes unstable system operation. be found using (1).
To solve this problem, we have developed a new sys-
tem that applies optical fiber current sensors. In this X = (L - vDt)/2… ………………………………… (1)
paper, we introduce characteristics and actual results where:-
of operation of the fault location system using the opti- L: line length
cal sensors practically applied to actual power trans- v: velocity of surge
mission lines. Dt: arrival time difference between two surges

2. Fault location systems for underground trans- 3. Optical fiber current sensors
mission lines
Figure 1 shows an overall configuration of the fault 3.1 Principles of detection of current
location system for underground transmission lines Figure 2 is a diagram explaining principles of detec-
using optical fiber current sensor for surge current de- tion of current by means of optical fiber current sen-
tection. The fault location system consists of two sets sors. When a beam of light is passed through a trans-
of optical fiber current sensors, two local stations, one parent medium in a magnetic field, polarization of the
master station, and data transmission lines connecting light is rotated through an angle that is directly pro-
all system components. Optical fiber current sensors portional to the strength of the magnetic field. This
are connected to cable heads of each phase and detect effect is known as the “Faraday effect” and forms the
surge current generated by a ground fault of any basic principle of the optical fiber sensor. Equation (2)
determines the Faraday rotation angle:
1:Tokyo Electric Power Company
2:Transmission and Distribution System Division

14
 GPS

Cable head Cable head

Optical fiber current sensor Optical fiber current sensor
Fault point
Local Surge current Surge current Local
station 1 station 2
Underground power cable

Master station X
L
Substation A Substation B
Fig. 1. Fault point locating system for underground transmission lines.

Table 1. Specifications of fault location system. Faraday device

Magnetic field Faraday rotation
Item Specifications
θF
Underground, overhead, submarine, and
Applicable
their combined one from 6.6 kV to the EHV
transmission lines
class of both ac and dc
Incident light
Phase-to-phase, phase-to-ground,
Locatable faults
lightning strike and open circuit faults
Number of Up to two circuits monitored simultaneously
monitoring circuit (expandable with another unit) Output
Optical fiber sensor, electro-magnetic Fig. 2. Faraday effect.
Faulty waveform
field sensor, Rogowski sensor, and
sensor
conventional CT
Underground lines <+/-50 m Optical system Current
Location accuracy
Overhead lines <+/-300 m
Resolution of Signal transmission fibers
25 ¥ 10-9s Electronics Optical box
timing counter Mirror
Light source Coupler
Special resolution Around 2 m (underground lines)
Communication
LAN, serial, modem, and ubiquitous module P1 Faraday sensor fiber
lines
Built-in test Automatic system check by simulated fault PD Signal
P2 processing Output
function event
PD
Alarm contact At time fault location, and at time of unit
output failure
Master station: per PC’s specification Fig. 3. Configuration of optical current sensor.
Dimensions and
Local station : W 450 ¥ H 177 ¥ D 296 mm,
weight
15 kg injected into the sensor fiber is reflected by the mirror
attached to the front end of the fiber and is returned to
θF = Ve · H · L……………………………………… (2) the light source. The magnetic field generated by the
where:- current flowing in the conductor creates the Faraday
θF : Faraday rotation (degree) effect in the sensor fiber. Reflected light coming back
Ve : Verdet constant (degree/A) through the sensor fiber enters an analyzer where it is
H : magnetic field intensity (A/m) split into two beams having orthogonal polarization
L : light path length (m) orientation. Intensity of two light beams passed
through the analyzer changes according to the polar-
3.2 Configuration of optical fiber current sensors ization plane rotation. In order to maintain linearity
Figure 3 shows the configuration of the optical fiber between the sensor output and the measured current,
current sensor used in the proposed system. The sen- main axes of the polarizer and the analyzer are usually
sor is a light and compact optical fiber current sensor oriented in such a manner that the angle between
having the Faraday effect element made from lead- them is 45 degrees. Optical signals passed through
doped glass. The sensor is of the reflective type and the analyzer are sent to the electronic circuit by the
does not require a spool for securing it on the cable. light receiving fiber where they are transformed into
The sensor operation is described below. Light from two electrical signals proportional to their intensities.
the light source is transmitted through the optical fi- These two electrical signals are processed in the sig-
ber to a polarizer where it is converted in linearly po- nal processing circuit to yield values proportional to
larized light that is injected in the sensor fiber. Light the measured current.

Fujikura Technical Review, 2012 15

 The sensor fibers consist of optical current sensors
3.3 Features of optical fiber current sensors contained in a fire-retardant liner tubing. The optical
The main features of the optical fiber current sensor termination box consists of a circulator for splitting
compared to current transformers can be outlined as and outputting light signals modulated at a low loss by
follows. the optical fiber couplers and the sensor fibers for the
a) Light weight and compactness: Since no metal is purpose of separating the light signals delivered by
used in the sensor components and in the light the optical fiber cable into three channels. The optical
transmission path, the sensor can be easily insu- termination box also serves as the receptacle for ex-
lated. The system is light weight and compact cess lengths of optical fibers. The optical fiber signal
due to the fact that no iron core is necessary. transmission path is made of a single-mode optical fi-
b) Ease of installation: Measurements can be per- ber cable and it performs the analog optical transmis-
formed without opening the main circuit just by sion between the sensor head and the signal process-
winding the flexible optical fiber around the con- ing unit. The signal processing unit contains a light
ductor. source and three circuits performing the O/E conver-
c) Immune to electromagnetic noise: Since the sen-
sor components operate as optical devices, the
system is not susceptible to electromagnetic Sensor fiber
(CH1) Sensor fiber
noise. ((CH2)
Sensor fiber
d) Wide range of measurements: The system can (CH3) Optical
provide accurate measurements of large current termination
within a wide range of frequencies. Moreover, it box
is not subject to distortions due to magnetic satu-
ration of the iron core.
e) Long-distance signal transmission: Since signals
are transmitted through the optical fiber, they ex- Sensor head
perience only minimal waveform distortions and
transmission losses, thus making it suitable for
long-distance transmission. Optical fiber cable

4. Optical fiber current sensors for detection of Light

source
surge current
O/E (CH1) Signal
processing. OUT (CH1)
4.1 Specifications O/E (CH1) (CH1)
Specifications of the surge current sensor discussed Signal
O/E (CH2)
in this paper are given in Table 2. Since this system is processing. OUT (CH2)
designed for the three-phase surge detection, it has O/E (CH2) (CH2)
three measurement channels with the frequency re- O/E (CH3) Signal
sponse up to 250 kHz that considered the fastest rise processing. OUT (CH3)
O/E (CH3) (CH3)
time of the expected propagation surge in a ground
fault on the underground transmission lines. Processing unit
Fig. 4. Configuration of surge current sensor.
4.2 Configuration
Figure 4 shows configuration of the system. The
system consists of a sensor head, optical fiber signal (A)
transmission channels, and signal processing units.
2000
Standard CT
CH1
Table 2. Standard specifications of optical fiber surge current CH2
sensor. CH3
1000
Item Specifications
Number of channels Three channels
Sensors: outdoors
Usage environment 0
Electronics: indoors
Current measurement 100 A - 2 kA (peak value)
range accuracy: less ± 5% 0 10 20 30
Frequency response 50 Hz - 250 kHz (flat) Time (µs)
Response time Raise time : under one μs Fig. 5. Output waveform of surge current sensor.

16
 Fig. 6. Installed sensor fiber for actual cable lines.

sion and calculations of the modulation depth. 6. Practical use

After testing the fault location on the actual trans-
5. Verification tests mission line, we checked windings and connections of
In order to verify characteristics of the developed the sensor fibers again, and this system was placed in
optical fiber current sensor, we performed multiple operation on the 275 kV underground cable (POF ca-
factory tests and field tests. We mainly introduce the ble with line length of 13.9 km).
surge current detection test in a factory and the fault Figure 6 is an appearance of sensor fiber attached to
location test in an actual line. a cable. In order to fully use advantages of the optical
fiber current sensor, sensor fibers were wound around
5.1 Factory tests the cable.
Surge current detection tests were carried out by We measured propagation speed and current wave-
applying positive and negative surge currents having forms of switching surges generated by operating the
the peak value of 100 - 2000 A and the rise time of 1 μs circuit breaker in the substation. We can determine
to three-phase sensor fibers using a lightning impulse parameters of the fault location system using mea-
generator. The standard CT output and outputs of all sured data. We have the application records of over 20
channels of the signal processing units were measured lines of this system at present.
by a digital oscilloscope. Figure 5 shows waveforms of
the standard CT output and outputs of all channels of 7. Conclusion
signal processing units. The relative error of wave- This paper deals with issues related to implementa-
forms of the signal processing channels compared to tion of the fault location system. Since existing sys-
the standard output waveform is within +/-2% and the tems for fault detection based on Rogowski coils use
time lag is approximately 800 ns. coaxial cables for transmission of signals from the sen-
sor, they are affected by electromagnetic noise pres-
5.2 Field tests ent in the substation environment resulting in unstable
We conducted the field tests of the fault location operation. The proposed system is characterized by
system on a 275 kV oil-filled underground cable some excellent immunity to electromagnetic noise and sub-
15.6 km (9.7 miles) long. Configuration of the testing stantially improved stability of location accuracy.
setup is similar to the fault location system shown in
Fig. 1. The fault was simulated by the switching surge References
generated by operating a circuit breaker at the substa- 1) S. Nasukawa, R. Kondo, K. Kurosawa, T. Yamaguchi, K.
tion A. Amano, and T. Yamada, “Application of Optical Fiber Cur-
Due to the immunity to noise of optical fiber sen- rent Sensors to Underground Cables,” Proc. 7th JICABLE
sors, the noise voltage in measured waveforms was Conference, Session A.5, Diagnostics (2) No. A 5.5, Paris
less than 20 mV, less than 5 A if converted to current (June 2007)
units, which is a remarkable result for a substation en- 2) K. Kurosawa, R. Kondo, S. Nasukawa, T. Yamaguchi, and K.
vironment with a high level of electromagnetic noises, Amano, “Development of Fault Point Location System for
thus confirming that optical fiber sensors can be suc- Underground Transmission Lines using Optical Fiber Cur-
cessfully used for fault detection in power transmis- rent Sensors,”The Papers of Joint Technical Meeting on
sion lines. Power Engineering and Power Systems Engineering, IEE
Japan, pp.37-41 (August 2007)

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