Flashover monitoring system using wireless sensor network

Flashover of insulators in transmission and distribution electric power systems causes a reduction of the system reliability and costly outages for the power company and their customers. In this paper, we present a system in which a wireless sensor network is used for continuous wirelessly monitoring contamination in high voltage insulators. The new system consists of different sensor nodes (e.g. humidity, temperature and dust) mounted on a dummy insulator that has to be placed close to high voltage substation or transmission line tower. The proposed approach is based on the Equivalent Salt Deposit Density (ESDD) severity method in order to check the pollution level on the insulator and to correlate with flashover voltage levels of the insulator string. In this approach, the photons measurement level (i.e. light intensity) is adopted as an indicator to the accumulated pollution level on the insulators. Extensive lab tests were carried out using different pollutants. ESDD measurements have been collected for all the pollution tests performed in the lab and a relationship between these values and the light intensity values has been established to correctly model the contamination level. Using, the established relationship between EESD and light intensity shall enable the power system control unit to accurately predict the flashover and accordingly schedule its crew to visit the site and clean these insulators.