Fault locating in ungrounded and high-resistance grounded systems

One of the most common and difficult problems to solve in industrial power systems is the location and elimination of the ground fault. Ground faults that occur in ungrounded and high-resistance grounded systems do not draw enough current to trigger circuit breaker or fuse operation, making them difficult to localize. Techniques currently used to track down faults are time consuming and cumbersome. A new approach developed for ground-fault localization on ungrounded and high-resistance grounded low-voltage systems is described. The system consists of a novel ground-fault relay that operates in conjunction with low-cost fault indicators permanently mounted in the circuit. The ground-fault relay employs digital signal processing techniques to detect the fault, identify the faulted phase, and measure the electrical distance away from the substation. The remote fault indicators are used to visually indicate where the fault is located. The resulting system provides a fast, easy, economical, and safe detection system for ground-fault localization.