FIELD: electrical engineering. SUBSTANCE: method involves discrimination of fundamental voltages and currents at one of ends of each line, application of discriminated voltages to inputs of simulators, measurement of currents in mentioned inputs, and comparison of measurement results with discriminated currents, application of voltages to outputs of simulators of separate lines to set them to equilibrium state, comparison of voltages across common-node line simulators, detection of faulty line recognized by voltage difference as compared to output voltages of simulators of other common-node lines; voltage coincidence across respective node; currents in simulators of good lines of given node are measured, terminal currents of faulty line are measured by superposing mentioned currents, common-node phase voltages are applied to respective inputs of faulty line simulators, the latter are placed in equilibrium state by connecting cross and longitudinal phase loads to points of suspected faults, conductance of cross loads and resistance of longitudinal loads are measured, load nodes are determined, zero-angle load is selected, and fault location and character is indicated by point of connection and relationship between conductances of cross load phases and resistances of zero-angle longitudinal load phases. EFFECT: improved accuracy, enlarged functional capabilities. 3 dwg
