In view of their own limitations of GA[1] and ACA[2][3] in the fault location of distribution network, this paper presents a new group intelligent optimization method which is simple and easy to implement, fast convergence rate, more global optimization ability, etc, and this is the PSO. Then the basic principles of the PSO algorithm and the Standard algorithm of PSO are discussed in details, on the base of that, this paper continues to introduce the principle of PSO algorithm which is used in the fault location of distribution network. This section mainly introduces the structure of distribution network, then makes a brief introduction of the fault location algorithm, finally writes out the detailed steps of PSO algorithm. When already understood the principles and algorithms, a detailed analysis of the distribution network. This paper makes use of this method in the process of the location of transformer combined with the high accuracy of fault location which avoid the possibility of local convergence. Finally this paper gives the analysis of case, the result shows that the proposed method of distribution network fault location is feasible.
