Abstract: Exemplary methods and systems for building an electrical grid topology and detecting faults in an electrical grid are disclosed herein. In an exemplary embodiment, a method for building an electrical grid topology of an electrical grid comprising a plurality of grid elements, the method comprises sending, from a first signaling module of a plurality of signaling modules of the electrical grid, a mapping signal; receiving, at a second signaling module of the plurality of signaling modules, the mapping signal; and deriving, from the mapping signal, grid characteristics of the electrical grid; wherein the grid characteristics are derived from the mapping signal based on the influence that one or more of the plurality of grid elements has on the mapping signal.

Abstract: The present invention provides an improved method of identifying which electrical conductor is supplying a signaling-point that is located on that conductor, in the electrical grid. The present invention makes the identification by measuring currents flowing into and out of a common connection-point, such as a power bus, and analyzing concurrent portions of these currents to determine whether they are ingress-current or egress-current over the analysis-intervals, and by a subsequent intra-bus and inter-bus analysis of the ingress/egress patterns. This is in contrast to prior art systems that rely on the measurement of signal strength, an approach that does not take best advantage of information in the signal because it fails to consider polarity of instantaneous voltages, reflective of the direction of current flow, or the intra-bus and inter-bus ingress/egress current-relationships.