Effective feature set-based high impedance fault detection

A method for detecting a high impedance fault (HIF), comprising:

• receiving power measurements from a power distribution system;
• extracting an angle difference between a negative sequence voltage and a zero sequence voltage (θV2−θV0) from the power measurements;
• and
• determining occurrence of an HIF based on the angle difference θV2−θV0.

A protective relay for a power distribution line, the protective relay comprising:

• a power coupler;
• and
• a high impedance fault (HIF) detector connected to the power coupler, comprising:
• feature extraction logic configured to extract instantaneous power characteristic values from a signal of the power coupler, the feature extraction logic comprising a Kalman filter that is configured to provide a first portion of the instantaneous power characteristic values after filtering a received voltage signal and a received current signal, the first portion of the instantaneous power characteristic values comprising at least one of an estimated in-phase component of a third harmonic of the received voltage signal (KFVa cos HV3, KFVb cos HV3, or KFVc cos HV3) or an estimated in-quadrature component of a third harmonic of the received voltage signal (KFVa sin HV3, KFVb sin HV3, or KFVc sin HV3);
• wherein KF is a Kalman Filter coefficient, va is defined by a voltage of phase A, vb is defined by a voltage of phase B, and vc is defined by a voltage of phase C;
• a system characteristic averager configured to provide averaged power characteristic values from the instantaneous power characteristic values;
• and
• a decision circuit configured to determine occurrence of an HIF based on a comparison of the instantaneous power characteristic values with the averaged power characteristic values using a trained HIF model.