Patent ID: 8659862

Claim:
A directional fault location and isolation system for a three phase electric power line including a main power line and a plurality of tap points, each radially connecting a tapped line section to the main power line, the main power line having a forward direction and a reverse direction, comprising: at each tap point, monitoring equipment including a forward side current monitoring device and a reverse side current monitoring device, sectionalizing equipment including a forward side sectionalizing switch and a reverse side sectionalizing switch, and communication equipment; and a directional fault controller comprising communication equipment and processing equipment operative to: communicate with the monitoring equipment and the sectionalizing equipment at each tap point; determine directionality of a fault on the power line at each current monitoring device; identify a faulted line section by identifying a change in the directionality of the fault associated with the faulted line section; and operate one or more of the sectionalizing switches to isolate the faulted line section from the circuit.