A Predictive Maintenance Approach for Non-Effectively Earthed Radial Distribution Networks

Abstract

Earth faults are the most common fault types in distribution networks. Earth faults can be permanent or incipient faults. Although incipient faults are temporary, they are prone to be turned into permanent faults depending on the insulation level of the system which leads severe impact on system safety. Therefore, incipient faults must be detected. Further, feeders with temporary faults should be evaluated to identify and rank the risky feeders. For this purpose, a hybrid-sequence-based trace algorithm is proposed for detecting faulted sections using COMTRADE data. The proposed method has been applied to the actual network in the European side of metropolitan Istanbul. Using the proposed approach, predictive maintenance is ensured for the distribution feeders. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.