WIRELESS EMBEDDED SYSTEM FOR POWER LINE

MONITORING
A.Sivaranjani. IIIYear/ECE AKTMCET
P. Umaparvathi. IIIYear/ECE AKTMCET

ABSTRACT
This work is an attempt to develop a
wireless embedded system that can provide
continuous on-line monitoring of the
power line. The main task is to implement
a wireless link to transmit the real time
information about the instantaneous
current and/or voltage on the power line to
a remote monitoring station. Two type of
systems are developed. They differ by the
amount of information communicated
through the wireless link
.
RMS Monitor
System which communicates only
the RMS values of the voltage and/or
current signal. This system uses the IEEE
802.15.4
(ZigBee)
based
wireless
communication transceivers because of the
low data rate requirement. The monitoring
equipment is a hand held device in which
the ZigBee wireless receiver is interfaced.
It has an LCD panel to display the RMS
reading.
Waveform Monitor
System which communicates the
instantaneous values of current and/or
voltage, on the line, continuously like a
stream. Because of the high data rate
requirement, IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) based
wireless transceivers are used for
communication. Two laptop computers
with built in WiFi adapter are

used for the demonstration; one on the

transmitter side and the other on the
receiver side. After reception, a labVIEW
software is developed to run in the laptop
at the receiver side for the real time tracing
of the signals. The software is programmed
to display, graphically, both the time and
frequency domain information of the
current and voltage signals as well as the
phase difference between them. It also
stores the instantaneous values with their
corresponding time of arrival information
for future reference and analysis.
INTRODUCTION
ELECTRIC power line monitoring
systems monitor in real time the voltage
and/or current on each/one of the three
phase lines in the electricity distribution
network. It may also monitor the voltage
and/or current on the neutral line, thus
sensing imbalanced loads. The collected
data can be used to measure various
parameters such as the root mean square
(RMS) value, frequency, power factor,
phase relations, power quality, harmonic
contents, etc. It allows power utilities and
consumers
to
perform
predictive
maintenance, power quality control,
manage energy consumption and cost, and
protect their electrical equipments.
There are many issues to consider
when measuring high voltage or current.
When specifying a measuring system, the
first thing is safety. Making highvoltage/current measurements can be
hazardous to the equipment, to the unit

under test, and to the personnel. To ensure

safety, an insulation barrier has to be
provided between the user and hazardous
voltages. So, by making use of the wireless
technology, the link between the user and
the sensing devices can be made wireless
so that only the information about the
measured quantities is transmitted to the
user.
The main motivation behind the
development of the proposed system is the
arrival of a new concept in Electricity
Distribution Technology called Smart Grid
4. It applies advanced digital technologies
for monitoring, maintenance and control of
the electricity distribution system. It
includes intelligent monitoring systems
that quantitatively and qualitatively
monitor and record the flow of electricity
throughout the distribution network. It is
capable of integrating renewable electrical
energy sources such as solar, wind, etc
with the distribution network in order to
utilize electricity efficiently. The whole
system is fully automated, like a computer
network, which can automatically control
the electricity flow throughout the grid by
adjusting the supply and consumption
based on the demand and/or utilization.
For
the
Transmission
and
Distribution industry, with millions of
assets and hundreds of thousands of
kilometers of power lines, distributed
geographically over thousands of square
kilometers, the task of monitoring asset
status and operating margins, and then
optimizing
its
utilization,
seems
particularly challenging, if not impossible.
This paper describes a method to develop a
wireless embedded system to capture,
transmit and continuously monitor the realtime information about the RMS value of
the current flowing through the Electric
Power Line.

Figure 1.1: A representation of the

proposed wireless embedded system for
power line monitoring.
LITERATURE SURVEY
ZHOU Yao, WANG Wei, XU Lijie,
NI Pinghao and WANG Lin 1 presented a
kind of transmission line temperature online monitoring system based on ZigBee
wireless transceivers. The system monitors
real-time temperature changes and
provided the basis for analysis of running
and dynamic increasing-capacity of
transmission lines.
Yi Yang, Deepak Divan, Ronald G. Harley,
and Thomas G. Habetler 2 introduced the
concept of a distributed power line
sensornet (PLS) as an alternative approach
to realizing cost-effective power grid
monitoring. By way of an example they
proposed a distributed sensor module that
can be clipped on to an existing power line
and have the following four core functions:
continuously monitoring critical line
parameters in the immediate vicinity of the
sensor; estimating the line status and
identifying incipient faults in a changing
environment; operating as a node of the
sensornet communication system; power
and fault management while allowing
sensing and communication functions.
DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

The proposed system consists of (a)

a transducer (LA 55-P) for sensing the
current from the electric line, (b) analog
circuits for signal conditioning and (c) a
microcontroller (PIC18F4550) for Analog
to Digital conversion and serial
transmission, (d) a pair of ZigBee based
wireless transceivers, and (e) another
microcontroller unit with LCD panel for
RMS reading.
The instantaneous current signal
from the sensor is amplified and level
shifted for microcontroller interfacing. The
microcontroller then converts it to digital
and the RMS value is calculated from the
samples. Then the RMS value is serially
sent to the wireless transmitter. At the
receiving end the wireless receiver is
interfaced with another microcontroller
that is interfaced to an LCD panel to
display the RMS current reading on the
power line at the moment. The whole
process is continously repeated for real
time monitoring.

The Current on the Electric line is

sensed using LA 55-P manufactured by
LEM. It works based on the principle of
Hall Effect. So, it has inbuilt isolation
mechanism.
Specification:
Measuring Range
: 0to100A
Conversion Ratio
: 1:1000
Dual Supply Voltage : 12 to 15 V
Linearity Error
: <0.15%
Bandwidth
: DC 200 KHz

Figure 3.4: LA 55-P (Current Transducer)

Amplification and Level Shifting
The bipolar output voltage of the
current sensor is in the range of millivolts
and need to be amplified and level shifted
to interface with the microcontrollers
ADC because it can handle only voltages
between 0 V and +5 V. So, the signal from
the sensor is first amplified and then level
shifted to fit between 0 and +5 V.

Figure 3.2: Block diagram of the system

for current capture and wireless
transmission.

Figure 3.3: Microcontroller unit with the

LCD panel interfaced with the wireless
receiver.
Current Tranducer

Figure 3.5: Amplification and level

shifting.
The amplifier is an operational
amplifier configured as closed loop
inverting amplifier with adjustable gains.
Variable resistors are provided for manual

gain adjustment as the signal amplitude

varies according to the current being
measured depending on the load. Figure
3 .6 shows the circuit used for the
purpose.

(1)
(2)
Where, N is the number of samples, x[i] is
the array holding the digital samples.
After the RMS calculation, the values are
converted to 10 bit format to match with
ADC resolution and serially transmitted to
the wireless transmitter.
Serial Transmission

Figure 3.6: Circuit diagram of op-amp

inverting amplifier.
A level shifting circuit Error: Reference
source not found as shown in Error:
Reference source not found is used to scale
and shift the bipolar output (-10 V to +10
V) of the amplifier to unipolar levels (0 V
to +5 V) to make it compatible with the
microcontrollers ADC.
Microcontroller Interfacing
The microcontroller used for the
project is PIC18F4550 Error: Reference
source not found. The amplified and level
shifted signal is interfaced with the ADC
of the microcontroller. The inbuilt ADC
peripheral has 10 bit resolution. The
microcontroller program has three
functions: Average calculation, RMS
calculation and serial transmission. The
RMS value is calculated after subtracting
the calculated average value from the
signal. Initially, the 10 bit ADC values are
stored in an array. By trial and error
correction method, delays are calculated
and routines are written in between the
sampling to increase the sampling period,
thus reducing the number of samples
required to capture only one complete 50
Hz cycle. The equations used are:

Serial transmission to the ZigBee

wireless transmitter is done through the
UART interface of the microcontroller.
Since one UART frame can hold only 8
bits of data, the 10 bit ADC value is split
into two 5 bit sets. The remaining three bits
of the data bits in the UART frame are
allotted
for
frame
identification
information (Figure 3 .7 and Figure 3 .8)
i.e. header will be 000 for frame 1 and
001 for Frame 2. The frames are sent
through the UART interface multiplexed in
time as shown in Figure 3 .9.

Figure 3.7: Format of frame 1. D4 to D0

are the 5 LSBs of the 10 bit ADC value.

Figure 3.8: Format of frame 2. D5 to D9

are the 5 MSBs of the 10 bit ADC value.

Figure 3.9: Serial transmission of the

frames multiplexed in time.

ZigBee Wireless Transceiver:

The serial data sent from the
microcontroller is transmitted using XBeePRO OEM wireless RF transceiver module
manufactured by Digi International, Inc
Error: Reference source not found. It is an
802.15.4 Standard compliant transceiver
which supports upto 250 kbps RF data rate.
It has a UART Interface and RF range
from 90 m (indoor) to 1600 m (outdoor). It
requires only 2.8 V to 3.3 V power supply
with a maximum current rating of 100 mA.
It can operate in temperatures between -40
C and +85 C.

system to monitor the RMS current on an

electric power line. The system uses a set
of low data rate ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4)
based wireless transceivers for the
communication. The description included
functions like current sensing, signal
conditioning, analog to digital conversion,
RMS calculation, serial data framing,
wireless serial communication and
monitoring. By using clip-on (split-core
design) current sensors and enclosing the
whole transmitter unit in a detachable
casing (without electromagnetic shielding),
the system can be easily mounted on the
line without interrupting the power flow
through the line.
REFERENCES
1.

Figure 3.10: Attaching the XBee PRO

OEM RF module with the serial interface
board.
Wireless Reception and Monitoring
At the receiver side the XBee
receiver module is interfaced with a
microcontroller for monitoring. After
reception, the microcontroller program
classifies the frames according to the frame
identification information, then combines
them to obtain the complete 10 bit digital
value and converts the numerical values to
an array of characters to display it on a 16
character-2 line LCD panel. For the testing
purpose, an already available LPC2148
microcontroller based development board
is used. It has many built in peripherals
including a MAX232 level converter and a
162 LCD display.
CONCLUSIONS
The paper described a simple
method to implement a wireless embedded

2.

3.

4.

ZHOU Yao, WANG Wei, XU Lijie,

NI
Pinghao,
WANG
Lin,
"Transmission Line Temperature online Monitoring System Based on
ZigBee", International Conference
on Sustainable Power Generation
and Supply, 2009.
Yi Yang, Deepak Divan, Ronald G.
Harley, and Thomas G. Habetler,
"Power Line Sensornet A New
Concept
for
Power
Grid
Monitoring",
IEEE
Power
Engineering
Society
General
Meeting, 2006.
Alessandro Ferrero, "Meter Voltage
Measurement", in John G. Webster
(ed.),
Electrical
Measurement,
Signal Processing and Displays, pp.
1.20 - 1.21, CRC Press, 2004.
Wikipedia-The Free Encyclopedia
[Online].
Available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/smart_g
rid.