Al-Dabbagh - Department of Electrical Engineering, RMIT University, Australia

In order to improve the reliability and therefore the quality of power supply, power distribution lines have sensitive earth fault schemes for detecting faults and consequently for isolating the faulty section. Unfortunately, under high impedance fault conditions, the reliability and safety of power supply are at serious risk, because of the small values of arcing fault currents as compared to normal load currents. Hence, conventional protection systems based on the measurement of-the magnitude of current fail to detect these faults. This paper provides a new approach for a novel protection system based on signal processing and using pattern recognition techniques.