To address the low detection accuracy of traveling wave heads for long-distance transmission line faults as well as the location deviation caused by the clock asynchronization of fault detection devices and the uncertainty of traveling wave velocity, this paper proposes a new fault location method for transmission lines based on improved variational mode decomposition (VMD) combined with Teager-Kaiser energy operator (TKEO) to detect the fault traveling wave head and the double-ended traveling wave location formula independent of timing and wave velocity. Firstly, the crested porcupine optimizer (CPO) is used to optimize VMD parameters. Then the line mode and zero mode components of the fault traveling wave are decomposed by VMD, and the initial wave heads of the components are detected by TKEO. Finally, according to the difference in time to reach the measuring point between the initial wave heads of the line mode and zero mode components, the proportional relationship between the fault distance and the difference distance is written, and the double-ended traveling wave location formula independent of timing and wave velocity is obtained. A 220 kV transmission line fault simulation model is built using Matlab/Simulink. The simulation results show that the method has good applicability under noise, different ground resistances, and different fault types, and the accuracy of the location results is high.