A Ground-Wire Active Current Based Fault-Location Method for Smart Monitoring of Underground Mine Cable Distribution Systems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13052/dgaej2156-3306.41410Keywords:
underground mine cable distribution system, ground-wire current, active current component, fault location, single-phase-to-ground fault, smart monitoring, local energy system, LoRa communicationAbstract
Underground mine cable distribution systems are critical industrial local energy infrastructures, where ground faults can lead to production interruption, difficult fault searching, and safety risks. This paper proposes a ground-wire active-current based fault-location method for smart monitoring of underground mine cable distribution systems. The method uses zero-sequence voltage as the fault trigger and phase reference, and measures ground-wire currents at both ends of each monitored cable section. By extracting the active components of the head-end and tail-end ground-wire currents, a fault judgment quantity is constructed through their algebraic summation. Theoretical analysis shows that, for non-faulted cable sections, the active ground-wire current mainly behaves as through-current and is largely cancelled by the double-ended summation. In contrast, for the faulted cable section, the fault current flows from the fault point toward both ends, producing a dominant active-current summation. Simulation results under transition resistances from 0 Ω to 1000 Ω verify that the proposed method can correctly identify internal cable-section faults and distinguish terminal busbar/switchgear faults without falsely locating a healthy cable section. A distributed smart monitoring architecture integrating ground-current sensors, zero-sequence voltage measurement, RS485/LoRa communication, and master-station processing is also presented. The proposed method provides an interpretable and practical solution for online fault location, faster fault isolation, and improved reliability of underground mine local energy distribution systems.
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