Underground Cable Fault Distance Locator for Smart Cities

Abstract

This paper proposes fault location model for underground power cable using microcontroller. The aim of this project is to determine the distance of underground cable fault from base station in kilometers. This project uses the simple concept of ohm’s law. When any fault like short circuit occurs, voltage drop will vary depending on the length of fault in cable, since the current varies. A set of resistors are therefore used to represent the cable and a dc voltage is fed at one end and the fault is detected by detecting the change in voltage using a analog to voltage converter and a microcontroller is used to make the necessary calculations so that the fault distance is displayed on the LCD display.