In view of the facts that traditional traveling wave fault location method is susceptible to the uncertainty of wave velocity and the accuracy of the location is dependent on the high sampling rate, an improved fault location algorithm based on variational modal decomposition(VMD)and symmetric difference energy operator(SDEO) is proposed in this paper. This algorithm makes full use of arrival time of the first transient traveling wave and the length of the transmission line,which eliminates the influence of wave velocity on the fault location and thus can improve the precision of location. The proposed algorithm combines the strong stability of the variational modal decomposition and the high tracking accuracy of the singularity of the signal with symmetrical differencing energy operator, so that the algorithm can determine the time when the mutation of instantaneous energy of the wave head occurs at low sampling rate, so as to exactly locate the fault. Simulation results by EMTP indicate that this method has a better performance for measurement accuracy than that of fault location based on wavelets. It can also economize the equipment expenses and it is suitable for engineering applications.