The invention relates to a half-wavelength transmission line protection method based on transient energy, belonging to the technical field of power system relay protection. If a fault is detected, thevoltage and current abrupt change are calculated by transient electrical quantities detected at the first and last terminals, , through the product of transient voltage and the current abrupt changes, the instantaneous power is calculated, and the transient energy is obtained by integrating the instantaneous power. Based on the polarity of the transient energy, the fault criterion is constructedin and outside the region, no matter where the fault point is located on the line, the method can reliably realize the fault identification in and outside the region. In addition, the polarity of transient energy is not affected by the fault angle and the transient resistance changes. Therefore, the transient energy protection method is suitable for half-wavelength transmission lines.