A refined genetic algorithm for fault section estimation in power systems using the time sequence information of circuit breakers

A new method to fault section estimation in power systems by using the time sequence information of tripped circuit breakers is presented. The main contributions of this paper include the following three aspects: a. the mathematical model of the fault section estimation problem by using the time sequence information of the tripped circuit breakers at the actuating time zone of any protective relay is proposed for the first time; b. an efficient method to identify the faulty subnetworks is developed by using the information from circuit breakers. In this way the fault diagnosis can be fulfilled in a very short time for large scale power systems and can be implemented online; c. a new method based upon Refined Genetic Algorithm(RGA) is used to solve the fault section estimation problem. Test results for there sample power systems have shown that the RGA method can find multiple optimal solutions directly and efficiently in a single run.