This paper presents a detection and signaling system designed to identify and locate high impedance faults caused by broken conductors on distribution primary feeders. Unlike conventional protection systems, which perform current sensing, the working principle of the proposed system consists on monitoring the voltage unbalance along a feeder. This allows the system to detect a fault occurrence even in cases when the conductor touches a high impedance earth surface (for instance asphalt). This system has an additional advantage of giving an indication of the location of a fault since it involves measurements at multiple points on a feeder. In order to detect the voltage unbalance produced by a broken conductor, a new sensor was developed which is sensitive to the electric field generated by primary feeders. A carrier communication channel is associated to each sensor allowing the high impedance fault occurrence information to reach the protection equipment located closer to or at the substation.
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