A Cycle Voltage Measurement Method and Application in Grounding Grids Fault Location

The corrosion of grounding grids can result in a grounding accident of a power system, and much attentions has been concentrated on the method used to detect a corrosion fault in a grounding grid, in which the methods of voltage measurement and magnetic field measurement are usually used. In this paper, a cycle voltage measurement method and L-curve regularization method are proposed to locate the faults in grounding grids. The L-curve method was used to select the appropriate regularization parameter, which can effectively balance the error and stability of the solution to the inverse problem. The uncertainty of the solution due to the ill-posed problem in the inverse problem has been well-solved. Experiments were conducted in a laboratory with two network types. In addition, a field experiment was carried out in a 110-kV substation. Both of the results showed that the method can effectively locate a branch fault with a single branch and multiple branches in the grounding grids.