Increasing the technological developments of smart sensors, Information and communication tools (ICT) the traditional electric power systems have emerged with the improvement of Smart grids. Smart grid is defined as a modernized electric power grid with the integration of ICT tools and distributed generation (DG) resources into existing power system to provide continuous, stable and quality of power to all. Present smart grid electric power system network, the fault identification and mitigation is one of very critical task. Current power system structure transformed remarkably due to extension and integration of enormous amount of DG resources at delivery side. To confront the limitations of smart grids, existing fault identification and mitigation methods requires immoderate revision by making use of excellent facilities and tools. That will be useful to attain automation in fault detection, enhance the voltage stability, transient stability, and self-healing ability to perform the desired task. This paper is going to presents a detailed survey about target on various types of faults and fault detection methods in smart grids.