Optimized artificial neural network to improve the accuracy of estimated fault impedances and distances for underground distribution system.

This paper proposes an approach to accurately estimate the impedance value of a high impedance fault (HIF) and the distance from its fault location for a distribution system. Based on the three-phase voltage and current waveforms which are monitored through a single measurement in the network, several features are extracted using discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The extracted features are then fed into the optimized artificial neural network (ANN) to estimate the HIF impedance and its distance. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique is employed to optimize the parameters of the ANN to enhance the performance of fault impedance and distance estimations. Based on the simulation results, the proposed method records encouraging results compared to other methods of similar complexity for both HIF impedance values and estimated distances.