The precise location of voltage sag sources plays an important role in formulating a voltage sag governance plan and clarifying the responsibility for the accident. The traditional location method of voltage sag sources is difficult to establish a precise mathematical model and locate the complex voltage sag sources accurately in the complex distribution network. In order to solve these problems, a location method for complex voltage sag sources based on random matrix theory is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the augmented matrix is constructed based on the influence factor data and the operation state data of the distribution network as the data source matrix, and the statistical characteristics of each data are analyzed by using the random matrix theory to determine the suspicious area of voltage sag source. Then, the disturbance signal of each node in the suspicious area of voltage sag source is analyzed by using the atomic algorithm and disturbance active power method, and it can determine the location of each disturbance source in the complex voltage sag event and the cause of voltage sag at each node. Compared with the existing model-based methods, the proposed method in this paper is a data-driven approach, which does not need the physical model and topology information. Furthermore, it can reduce the amount of data and improve the analysis efficiency on the basis of determining the suspicious area of the voltage sag source. Finally, the examples are given to show that the proposed method can accurately locate the disturbance sources in complex voltage sag events. © 2020 Lizhen Wu et al.