In this paper, a fault location method based on divide-and-conquer (DAC) is proposed to solve the inadequacy problem that arises when using the traditional fault section location method based on the optimization model of logic operation. The problem is that it is difficult to balance speed and accuracy after the scale of the distribution network is expanded. First, the causal link between fault information and the faulty device was described using the road vector, the equivalent transformation of the logical operations in the traditional model was implemented with the properties of the road vector, and the numerical computational model of the fault location was constructed. Based on this, the optimization-seeking variable “approximation gain” was introduced to prove that the proposed model conforms to the recursive structure of DAC, and the method of applying DAC to locate faults is proposed. The method applies the “Divide-Conquer-Combine” recursive mode to locate faults, and each level of recursion contains only linear-time “approximation gain” operations and constant-time decomposition and combination operations. The efficiency analysis and simulation results show that the proposed method has linear-time complexity and can accurately locate faults in milliseconds, providing a reference for solving the fault location problem in large distribution networks.

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