Abstract: In view of problem that fault line selection method based on wavelet analysis of coal mine power grid ca't guarantee the optimal decomposition effect due to the decomposition effect depends on choice of primary function, the paper presented a fault line selection method with transient state based on intrinsic mode energy. The method uses adaptivity of empirical mode decomposition to signal local feature to analyze transient characteristics of zero sequence current for single-phase grounding fault, and defines intrinsic mode energy and energy weight factor as parameters of fault characteristics, so as to realize data mining of fault information of transient state. It obtained intrinsic mode energy of zero sequence transient current of each line after fault and calculated energy weight factor, then determined fault line by comparing the energy weight factors, namely, the line with the biggest energy weight factor is fault line. The theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the method is not affected by transition resistance, fault time and other fault conditions, and can accurately achieve fault line selection of coal mine high-voltage power grid.