Basing on Hilbert-Huang transform, this study proposes a unique bus transient protection method. The algorithm decomposes the fault travelling wave currents of two lines connected to the bus into inherent mode functions (IMFs) and integrates the instantaneous amplitudes of the IMFs and calculates their differences. The two instantaneous amplitudes and their differences are normalized, basing on the transient resistance and initial fault phase angle. The two normalized instantaneous amplitudes and their differences served as the joint fault feature. Therefore, under various fault conditions, the fault characteristics of the bus fault are very different from the out-of-area fault. Influence of the initial fault phase angle and transition resistance is minimized by normalizing the fault feature variables; thus, the reliability of protection is enhanced. By modelling several failure types of failures in a 500 kV power system in ATP-Draw, the viability of the presented algorithm is demonstrated.