On Wireless Sensors Communication for Overhead Transmission Line Monitoring in Power Delivery Systems

Abstract

The transmission of energy is monitored in the smart grid through deploying sensors in all the components, including the overhead transmission lines. There are many poles/towers supporting a long overhead transmission line. Naturally, sensors are deployed on the location close to the poles/towers on each span. Due to the limited transmission range of the wireless transceiver module of a sensor, researchers generally assume that data generated by a sensor have to be delivered to the substation through a set of sensors in-between. This results in a linear network model. In this paper, we first analyze the performance of this model in handling the traffics extracted from an existing testbed. We realize that the linear network model may not be sufficient to support future smart grid applications which may have diversified requirements on data delivery. We then study a new network model in which sensor/relay nodes can also communicate with other nodes using a wide area network such as the cellular network. In this new model, the network formed can be reconfigured based on the application requirements to deliver information to the substations efficiently and effectively.

A Survey on Smart Grid Potential Applications and Communication Requirements

“…Hence, to monitor T&D systems, wireless sensor nodes are deployed on some parts of the transmission lines and communicate with the relay node to transmit the monitored data. The relay node can be serviced by GSM/GPRS/UMTS as proposed in [8], to send the collected data via cellular communication technologies to the control center.…”

“…According to the network model that is proposed in [8], it takes 73 s to send information from the relay node to the sink node in a 100 node network model with hybrid communication technologies, e.g., ZigBee, GPRS, etc.…”

A Cognitive Radio-Based Energy-Efficient System for Power Transmission Line Monitoring in Smart Grids

“…In addition, the workload is not balanced for the relaying sensors, because the sensors near the substations must deliver more data, exhausting their battery energy rapidly, compared to other sensors [13]. Considering the bottlenecks associated with a linear chain sensor node-based monitoring system, Hung et al [1] proposed a hierarchal model considering a combination of cellular transceivers mounted on each transmission tower, along with wireless sensors to collect and transmit the power transmission line status. Huge installation and subscription costs involved in this work inspired the researchers to find optimal 2…”

“…Wireless sensors are put in various components of transmission lines to collect different physical and electrical parameters of the transmission lines (like sagging, vibration, electric current density, icing effects, vegetation, overheating, etc.) [1,2]. However, delivering the huge amount of collected information to the PCC, located miles away, in a long hop-by-hop linear topology is the most critical task in developing a smart transmission grid (STG) due to short ranges, low data rates, less successful data delivery, unbalanced energy consumption, and higher data collisions in wireless sensors.…”

On applications of short distance RF for smart grid at distribution level

“…This model is illustrated in Fig.1(a). This model is same with liner model proposed in [11][12]. In this model, each node in RF layer connected with the device in sensing layer through legacy serial port RS232 or RS485 port.…”