The lightning location systems were installed in many countries during last twenty years. The paper presents the SAFIR system called PERUN, which was built in Poland in 2002. The lightning location systems are used for different purposes including among other things meteorology, weather forecasting and aviation. A brief review of fault detection on transmission and distribution lines made abroad and the first experience of the Polish National Grid PSE was shown

Bodzak, P

Chrzan, K L

Gajda, W

English

Repozytorium Eny Politechnika Wrocławska

International Symposium on Modern Power Systems MEPS, Wroclaw 2006 
 
Application of lightning location systems for fault detection 
on transmission and distribution lines 
 
 
                          K.L. Chrzan                                                              P. Bodzak, W. Gajda 
        Department of Electrical Engineering                Institute of Meteorology and Water Management 
          Wroclaw University of Technology                                                Podlesna 61 
                50-370 Wroclaw, Poland                                                01-673 Warsaw, Poland 
             krystian.chrzan@pwr.wroc.pl                                          Wojciech.Gajda@imgw.pl 
 
 
 
Abstract - The lightning location systems were installed 
in many countries during last twenty years. The paper 
presents the SAFIR system called PERUN, which was 
built in Poland in 2002. The lightning location systems 
are used for different purposes including among other 
things meteorology, weather forecasting and aviation. 
A brief review of fault detection on transmission and 
distribution lines made abroad and the first experience 
of the Polish National Grid PSE was shown. 
 
Keywords: lightning, overvoltage, SAFIR system, 
lightning caused outage  
 
1. INTRODUCTION 
 
The adverse weather conditions and especially storms 
decrease considerably the reliability of electrical power 
system. Therefore long years ago the power utilities started 
to use the meteorological information to improve the 
power delivery. The storm warning information from 
meteorology stations, airports and electrical substations 
were applied in 1920s [1]. The meteorology uses today 
many technical achievements like: Doppler radars, 
automatic measurement net, lightning location systems and 
professional computer software. The special offer give the 
short-term prognoses. The so-called now-casting helps in 
deciding process of power system staff [2]. 
The storm activity was noted at meteorology stations 
based on visual and acoustic phenomena. The number of 
storm days (keraunic level) was a classical parameter. The 
mean distance between meteorology stations in Poland is 
70 km but the storm cloud dimensions are in the range of 
10 km. Therefore, the station staff did not detect many 
storms. There were some trials with radio-pelengators 
carried out in 1980s.  
 Lightning is responsible for many outages of 
distribution and transmission lines. The high voltage lines 
(110, 220 and 400 kV) in Poland are protected by ground 
wires, the ground resistance of the pole should be smaller 
than 10 Ω. Additionally, these lines have the efficiently 
grounded neutral point. There are also high voltage lines 
without ground wire on the world, usually these lines have 
the wood poles [3]. Sometimes there are even such 230 kV 
or 500 kV lines with metal poles [4]. The lightning fault 
indicator for overhead power lines amounted 1,0 per 100 
km/year for 110 kV lines, 0,6 for 220 kV lines and 0,1 for 
400 kV lines in Poland in 1980s. The lightning is 
responsible for about 50% of line faults in Japan [5]. In 
other countries this factor is usually lower, e.g. 29% in 
South Africa [6]. It is interesting to note that in this 
country even 38% of line fault causes are unknown. 
 The static wave method of earthig location in overhead 
lines were applied after the Second World War. These 
methods use the wave propagation along the cable line 
without the operating voltage. The measurement of wave 
propagation time to the fault place and its comeback allow 
the calculation of fault place. The static methods were 
widely used for insulated cables. The dynamic methods 
can locate the fault during transient time between the fault 
while and the voltage switching-off time.  
 
2. LIGHTNING LOCATION SYSTEMS 
 
The lightning discharge produces the electromagnetic 
wave with a broad frequency band (fig. 1).  
 
 
Fig. 1. The spectrum of waves caused by lightning [7]. 
 
The wave emitted by cloud to earth lightning have the 
greater energy at the very low frequency (VLF) and low 
frequency (LF) bands. Uman and other proposed the 
emission and propagation models of electromagnetic 
waves generated by return discharges. It is assumed that at 
the beginning of return discharge (before the current 
reaches its maximum value), the electromagnetic field can 
be described by the so-called long transmission line model 
[8], 
 
                
D
cDtIv
tE
⋅
−⋅⋅
−=
pi
µ
2
)/()( 0              (1) 
Frequency    ( kHz )
100 101 102 103 104 105
Si
gn
al
 
po
w
er
0,00
0,25
0,50
0,75
1,00
1,25
VLF LF/VLF VHF
where:  
E – the vertical component of electromagnetic field at 
ground level (which have infinitive low resistivity) in 
time t 
µ0 –  vacuum magnetic permitivity 
ν - propagation speed of return discharge near to ground 
I - current at the bottom of lightning channel 
D - the distance from the lightning channel 
 
The measured electrical field E at the distance D allow 
to calculate current I from equation (1). The typical 
lightning generate the field of 5 – 10 Vpeak/m with the 
return discharge speed of 1,5  ⋅ 108 m/s. Using these values 
the simple calculation gives the current amplitude of 27 kA 
[9]. 
 The lightning counters, the primitive radio receivers 
were built at the beginning of XX century [10]. Today, few 
methods can be applied for detecting the lightning 
discharges. Different physical values can be measured: (1) 
electric field amplitude, (2) magnetic field direction, (3) 
electromagnetic wave time of arrival, (4) radar wave, (5) 
light direction, (6) acoustic wave of arrival [11]. The best 
accuracy has the system consisting of at least few antennas 
located at different places of a controlled area. The 
National Lightning Detection Network NLDN enveloping 
the whole territory of USA belongs to the largest lightning 
location systems [9]. In Europe some national systems 
were also connected to the greater networks. One example 
is the EUCLID system consisted of Austrian ALDIS, the 
French MTEORAGE and the German BLIDS.  
 The modern lightning location systems register the 
wide band of electromagnetic field from VLF up to UHF 
and VHF. The changes of electromagnetic field are 
measured and different detection methods are applied as 
MDF (Magnetic Direction Finder) or TOA (Time of 
Arrival) [9]. The interferometric method, based on phase 
shift signal measurement is used at VHF band (about 110 
MHz). The SAFIR system of Vaisala-Dimensions 
Company working on this method was installed in Poland 
in 2001. The systems using VHF band can traced the 
lightning not only in two dimensions but also in three 
dimensions. Because the VHF signal propagate in the 
space along the lines, therefore these systems can have a 
very high accuracy in the range of 100 – 200 m [12]. The 
system consists of 8 antennas installed in Warsaw, 
Włodawa, Sandomierz, Częstochowa, Kalisz, Gorzów 
Wielkopolski, Toruń and Olsztyn. The antenna of SAFIR 
system called PERUN is shown in the fig. 2. 
 
Rys.3 Zespół 
 
Fig. 2. Antenna of the PERUN system 
 
3. APPLICATION OF LIGHTNING LOCATION 
SYSTEMS (LLS) FOR FAULTS DETECTION ON 
OVERHEAD LINE 
 
LLS are used by military and civil aviation, meteorology, 
forestry, industry and assurance agencies [13]. The tracing 
possibility of electrical phenomena inside of clouds allows 
predicting the intensive rain precipitations or hurricanes. 
The LLS together with weather radars allow forecasting of 
very dangerous situations like heavy rains in Klodzko 
Valley in July 1998. The Tampa Electric Company has 
used LLS for fault location on transmission line for the 
first time in 1979 [9]. Due to the positive experience of this 
trial the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) 
supported the building of National Lightning Detection 
Network (NLDN) in USA. The application of LLS gives 
following advantages for the power utilities: 
fault detection on lines in the whole country using the 
network consisted of few antennas. The fault location 
systems e.g. LAS-2 can locate the earthing place on these 
lines where that systems were installed. Hundreds of 
systems had to be installed to control all 110 – 400kV lines 
in Poland.  
The fault location time is shorter due to limitation of 
line inspection distance to about 1 km. The fault repair 
time and time without the operating voltage can be shorter. 
The repair group working on the lines can be warned 
about the coming storms. The people security will be 
increased. 
Control of lightning caused outages and detection of 
lines or their fragments that have especially high lightning 
outage rate. Based on this study the lightning protection of 
weakest lines or their fragments can be upgraded [14]. 
The access to LLS data, especially to lightning density 
and lightning current parameters for the given region and 
time period. 
The detailed analyses of given lightning strokes (the 
distance from the line, current amplitude, occurrence time) 
and their comparison with the breakers operation time can 
divide the faults caused by lightning and faults caused by 
other reasons. The results of this analysis depends on the 
lightning location and lightning current parameter 
accuracy. Cummnis K.L, Krider E.P and Malone M.D. 
have described widely the application of lightning data by 
electric power utilities and have discussed the lightning 
location errors  [9]. The so-called confidence regions have 
an elliptical shape and the location accuracy can be 
characterized by giving the length of the semi-major and 
semi-minor axes and the orientation of the error ellipse 
(fig. 3). The location accuracy are in the range of 500–
1000 m and can be enhanced to 200 m after corrections 
taking the ground configuration and resistivity into account 
[9].  Flash timing to about a second is normally required to 
correlate a specific cloud-ground flash with a power outage 
or interruption. The LLS stroke times are now accurate to a 
few microseconds due to the use of GPS. The detection 
efficiency of the LLS depends on the number of antennas 
and the lightning distance from the nearest antennas. The 
distant antennas can not record the weak lightning with the 
current lower than 5 kA. The detection efficiency of 
SAFIR system installed in Poland shall be higher than 
95%. 
  
 
Fig. 3. The location of return strokes and the associated 
confidence regions that were time correlated with faults on 
a 115 kV line [9] 
 
The error of current amplitude estimation can amount 
20-30% and depends on the wave propagation over 
grounds with different propagation losses. The calibration 
carried out in Austria has shown that the current amplitude 
estimated by LLS differs 10% from the real current [16]. 
The positive lightning charge is proportional to the current 
amplitude. This relation does not exist for the negative 
polarity lightning because of different number of strokes in 
negative flashes. The newest LLS can estimate the stroke 
number in multiple flashes and their polarity. 
Unfortunately, the LLS are not able to measure so 
important parameters like the current increase rate or the 
DC component amplitude. 
 
3. EXAMPLES OF LLS APPLICATIONS BY POWER 
UTILITIES 
 
Diendorfer compared the faults on high voltage lines 
in Austria for which the reasons were unknown or which 
could be caused by lightning with the lightning events 
registered by ALDIS lightning location system [15]. The 
analysis was done for the years 1996-1999. It was assumed 
that the disturbance could be caused by lightning strokes 
placed not further to the line than 5 km and which occurred 
no earlier or later than 5 s than the fault. Between 100 
correlated events “line fault – lightning stroke”, 90 flashes 
occurred in the time window ± 1 second (0 means the fault 
time).  
Lightning caused fault rate of 110 – 500 kV lines 
(defined as the number of lightning  caused faults per 100 
km per year) were calculated in South China [17]. The 
width of the narrow band along a transmission line is set to 
12 km for the calculation of ground flash density. The 
correlation coefficient between lightning caused line fault 
rate N and ground flash density Ng was relatively low. It 
was determined as 0,64 for 110 kV lines and only 0,44 for 
220 kV lines. For the same Ng = 10 the lightning caused 
fault rate for different lines can be found between 2 and 40. 
The relationship between lightning days Td and ground 
flash density Nd was found as similar to other regions. 
 
                          
5,10054,0 dg TN ⋅=                   ( 2 ) 
Transmission system faults do not generally cause 
direct customer outages due to redundancy in the design of 
these systems. However, as faults on distribution systems 
occur, an outage to portion of the distribution network will 
cause outages of service to customers that are downstream 
on the feeder from this point of failure. These outages 
require the immediate dispatch of a repair crew to first 
locate the source of the outage and then to repair and 
restore service to customers. The paper [18] documents a 
study undertaken to monitor the faults on rural distribution 
lines in Minnesota using the LLS. The results of this study 
have shown that available lightning data combined with 
readily available disturbance monitoring could pinpoint the 
location of disturbances due to lightning within of a few 
spans on a distribution line. 
 The quick repair of lightning caused disturbances 
depends on the time needed for the correlation of LLS data 
with the line protection data. A server-client software 
written in JAVA programming language to automatically 
correlate power line outages and lightning location 
information was built in Slovenia [19]. One of the most 
important features of this program is a nearly real-time 
operation. It can be downloaded from the www server. 
 The LLS can be used not only for fault locations. The 
failure analysis of 400 kV capacitive voltage transformers 
was carried out in Venezuela [20]. The calculated over-
voltages due to direct strokes or due to strokes close to line 
were lower than the basic impulse level of the equipment. 
The input data for the EMTP over-voltage calculation were 
delivered by LLS. The measurements of lightning induced 
voltages in a low-voltage system in Norway were 
compared with the calculations based on LLS data [21]. It 
was shown that the induced voltages strongly depend on 
the ground resistivity. A reasonable agreement between 
measurements and calculations was found for the ground 
resistivity of 1000 Ωm. 
 
 
 
Fig. 4. The storm situation over t Poland from 21.07.2004 
 
 The Polish National Grid (PSE) receives data each 10 
minutes about the storm situation in the country from the 
Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (fig.4, 5). 
The map consists of transmission grid fragments and allow 
to evaluate the stroke distances from the lines. The 5 
minutes time window is of course to wide therefore, PSE 
company plans to build a professional program for better 
fault location. 
 
 
 
Fig. 5. The lightning close to 400 kV line in the  
Northern Poland on Mai 23, 2005 
 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
 
The lightning location systems (LLS) are used by 
power utilities for about 25 years. The modern LLS can 
operate in real-time mode and locate the faults on 
transmission or distribution lines within a few hundreds of 
meters.  
The data delivered by LLS can also be used for 
different purposes e.g. they can be applied for the EMTP 
calculations of lightning caused voltages. 
 
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Application of lightning location systems for fault detection on transmission and distribution lines

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Application of lightning location systems for fault detection on transmission and distribution lines

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