In view of the problem that it is difficult to detect traveling wave head in fault localization of single-phase grounding of small current grounding system, and for the current detection method of Hilbert yellow, there are some problems such as mode mixing, low computational efficiency, difficulty in selecting medium and small wave basis of wavelet detection method and large computational amount. Based on Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) and Teager Energy Operator (TEO), a single-end traveling-wave ranging method is proposed. This method can detect the traveling wave head and reduce the computational complexity greatly. The reliability of the method is verified by the comprehensive simulation of ATP-EMTP and Matlab. The simulation results show that this method has good reliability and high accuracy. This work is supported by National Science and Technology Support Program of China (No. 2013BAA01B03) and Science and Technology Project of China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd. (No. 073000KK52180005).