A new fault locating method based on the transient zero mode currents is proposed to locate the single phase grounding fault in the feeder automation system. The waveforms of transient zero mode currents at both ends of a non-faulty section gathered by feeder terminal unit(FTU) are similar, with a correlation coefficient close to one. On the contrary, the correlation coefficient is nearly zero for the currents at both ends of a faulty section. By calculating the maximum correlation coefficient in faulty cases, the calculation errors resulted from asynchronous sampling of FTUs can be avoided. The results of ATP simulation and static simulation have proved the accuracy and feasibility of the new method.