Abstract: It is difficult to identify the wave head reflected by the fault point in the single-ended traveling wave fault location method for the transmission lines. The wavefront steepness of the initial traveling wave of the fault is related to the distance to the fault.This paper analyzes the relationship between the wavefront steepness and the distance to the fault, and proposes a single-ended traveling wave location method combining the wavefront steepness and wavelet head identification. The method first calculates the wavelet transform modulus maximum value of the waveform of single-ended traveling wave and obtains the starting point of initial wave head and each reflected wave head. The preliminary fault distance is calculated by the wavefront steepness of the first wave head, and the maximum value of the wavelet modulus closest to this distance is selected to determine the reflected wave head of the fault point, so as to obtain the accurate fault location results. The case study results prove the effectiveness of the method.