Broken Conductor Fault Detection using Symmetrical Components in Distribution Power Systems - An Implementation Case

Broken Conductor Fault is an event where a line cable breaks and may or may not touch a ground surface. In case of touching the ground, a High Impedance Fault (HIF) can occur. This specific situation can lead to a detection fail for the protection system. It is due to the fact that the HIF does not produces enough fault current to operate conventional protection systems or fuse. On the other hand, if the cable does not touch any surface, the upstream protection equipment will not sense any overcurrent in its system; otherwise, it will sense a current reduction and the protection will not operate. To undertake this problems in a simple protection logic, this paper presents an implementation of a symmetrical component logic to enhance the traditional protection systems, mainly in a scenario where there are single-phase transformers. Those assets are source of unbalanced loads. Moreover, this paper presents a way to implement the logic proposed into the commercial IEDs. Lastly, performance results are showed through IED logic simulation software, and on-field performance is presented.