It is very difficult to correctly identify single-phase-to-ground fault (SFG) in distribution system with neutral non-effectively grounded (NNG). A novel travelling wave based single-phase-to-ground protection is proposed in this presentation. The polarity of initial transient current and voltage travelling waves are used to identify the fault direction, and power frequency voltages are used to distinguish SFG from phase-to-phase fault to ensure the reliability of the protection. In the presentation, wavelet transforms and module maxima theory was adopted to represent the polarity of travelling waves effectively and to construct the protection algorithm. The analysis and simulation demonstrate that the protection is valid.