Robust and systemwide fault location in large-scale power networks via optimal deployment of synchronized measurements

This dissertation addresses a novel method for fault location in power systems, while providing a new vision for the deployment of wide-area measurement systems and the application of robust estimation techniques in an effort to achieve systemwide, cost-effective, and resilient fault-location capability in large-scale power systems.;The first part of this dissertation introduces a novel methodology for synchronized-measurement-based fault location in large-scale power grids. The method is built on the notion of traveling waves that propagate throughout the power network. The approach is based upon capturing the arrival times of the fault-initiated traveling waves using a few synchronized sensors and triangulating the location of the fault with the aid of the recorded arrival times of these waves. In order to pinpoint (locate) the faults, these sparsely distributed sensors are exploited to capture point-on-wave samples of transient voltages after the occurrence of a fault.;The second stage of this dissertation complements the fault-location system developed in the first part of the study. The optimal deployment strategy for synchronized measurements is devised in such a way that the power grid is rendered observable from the viewpoint of fault location. Accordingly, the concept of fault-location observability is described and the restrictive cases, which may exist due to system topology as well as transmission-line lengths and lead to the occurrence of fault-unobservable segments (blind spots) on transmission lines, are illustrated with examples.;The final part of this dissertation harnesses the results of the previous parts of the dissertation so as to make the fault-location capability of the power grid robust against unwanted changes in synchronized measurements, which may occur as a result of sensor failures and measurement tampering due to cyberintrusions, thus adversely affecting reliable fault-location estimation. Two bad-data processing techniques that enable the fault-location scheme to remain insensitive to corruption of data in a certain number of redundant measurements are introduced.