Development of a Self-Powered Temperature Monitoring Wireless Node for Transmission Lines for Smart Grid Application

Increasing the safe operating temperature limits of the transmission line, by a small percentage above the present safe operating temperature limit can help in transmission of more power over existing lines and it would also help in avoiding huge investment and loss of time due to regulatory processes for establishment of new lines. Since the operating temperature is a critical parameter for transmission of the power, low cost sensors on high tension lines would enable data acquisition on real time basis for faster decision making. This is an alternative power source to the battery or solar panels. The results of laboratory experiments and data on simulation for the developed self-powered temperature, sag and tension monitoring system are presented and discussed in this paper. A comparison of two different methods of computation of temperature based on frequency and amplitude of output signal and cost benefit of the different methods of powering the wireless sensor nodes for transmission line application are also discussed.