Patent Document ID: 8336352
Application ID: 12692919
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. In an electrical power distribution system, a method for detecting the occurrence of a fault comprising: monitoring waveforms on the distribution system; sampling the current of the waveforms and processing the samples obtained to detect any anomalies which may indicate a fault has occurred within the distribution system, the processing including detecting any transients within a set of waveform samples by identifying anomalous samples contained within the set relative to a statistical pattern of recent waveform samples; and, classifying samples meeting pre-established criteria indicative of a fault to then classify the result of a sampling as representing a likely fault occurrence or some other type of anomaly which is likely not a fault occurrence, the classification including comparing transients against a predetermined set of criteria to determine which transients result from faults rather than from other events within the distribution system, and features used for classifying a transient as a fault including identifying a peak current magnitude of those samples within a transient and measuring how much the magnitude of the current changes between the peak magnitude and the resulting magnitude after the transient has settled.