Bonfring International Journal of Power Systems and Integrated Circuits, Vol.
1, Special Issue, December 2011 39
ISSN 2250 1088 | 2011 Bonfring Abstract---The present day power systems combine various modes of generation, transmission and conversion. There is no unique system of monitoring the power frequency, faulted switching condition or the conversion switching phenomena. Major issue is the continuous isolation required for the measuring equipments. This paper describes a simple method to implement a wireless embedded system to continuously monitor the RMS current through the power line. A low data rate ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) based wireless transceiver is used for the wireless communication.
I. INTRODUCTION lectric 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, switching etc. It allows power utilities and consumers to perform predictive maintenance, power quality control, manage energy consumption and cost, monitor 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 high-voltage/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. The second thing is the huge measuring transformers in order to get the required isolation, which adds to the cost of equipment and space. By making use of the wireless technology, the link between the user and the sensing devices can be made wireless providing required isolation so that only the information about the measured quantities is transmitted to the user. The main motivation behind the development of the
P.A. Abraham, Assistant Professor, Department of ECE, Jyothi Engineering College, Thrissur, Kerala, India. E-mail: abraham@jecc.ac.in Dr. K.A. Narayanankutty, Professor, Department of ECE, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India. E-mail: ka_narayanankutty@ettimadai.amrita.edu Dr.T.N. Padmanaban Nambiar, Chairperson, Department of EEE, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore, India. Email: tnp_nambiar@amrita.edu proposed system is the arrival of a new concept in Electricity Distribution Technology called Smart Grid [7]. 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. The present day transmission systems also utilize a variety of semiconducting switching elements which also require attention. This paper describes a method to develop a wireless embedded system to capture, transmit and continuously monitor the real-time information about the RMS value of the current flowing through the Electric Power Line.
Figure 1: A Representation of the Proposed Wireless Embedded System for Power Line Monitoring. Wireless Embedded System for Power Line Monitoring P.A. Abraham, Dr. K.A. Narayanankutty and Dr.T.N. Padmanaban Nambiar E Bonfring International Journal of Power Systems and Integrated Circuits, Vol. 1, Special Issue, December 2011 40 ISSN 2250 1088 | 2011 Bonfring II. LITERATURE SURVEY Large amount of literature is available about monitoring power system parameters through wired network, optical fibre and optical beam methods [9][10]. However, a very few papers are available on wireless monitoring. ZHOU Yao, WANG Wei, XU Lijie, NI Pinghao and WANG Lin [1] presented a kind of transmission line temperature on-line 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. III. 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.
Figure 2: Block Diagram of the System for Current Capture And Wireless Transmission.
Figure 3: Microcontroller Unit with the LCD Panel Interfaced with the wireless Receiver A. Current Tranducer 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 : 0 to 100 A Conversion Ratio : 1:1000 Dual Supply Voltage : 12 to 15 V Linearity Error : <0.15% Bandwidth : DC 200 KHz
Figure 4: LA 55-P (Current Transducer) B. 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 5: Amplification and Level Shifting.
Bonfring International Journal of Power Systems and Integrated Circuits, Vol. 1, Special Issue, December 2011 41 ISSN 2250 1088 | 2011 Bonfring 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 6 shows the circuit used for the purpose.
Figure 6: Circuit Diagram of Op-Amp Inverting Amplifier
A level shifting circuit [4] as shown in Figure 7 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.
Figure 7: Circuit Diagram of Level Shifter C. Microcontroller Interfacing The microcontroller used for the project is PIC18F4550 [6]. 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. The array size is kept above the number of samples required for one complete cycle of the 50 Hz sine wave, which is necessary [3] to calculate the Average (1) or RMS (2) values. The array size cannot be too high due to the limitations of the microcontrollers memory. 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: - (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. D. Serial Transmission 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 8 and Figure 9) 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 10.
Figure 8: Format of frame 1. D4 to D0 are the 5 LSBs of the 10 bit ADC value.
Figure 9: Format of frame 2. D5 to D9 are the 5 MSBs of the 10 bit ADC value.
Figure 10:Serial transmission of the frames multiplexed in time. E. ZigBee Wireless Transceiver The serial data sent from the microcontroller is transmitted using XBee-PRO OEM wireless RF transceiver module manufactured by Digi International, Inc [5]. 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. The XBee-PRO module is designed to handle voltage levels between 0 and +3.3 V. So a suitable voltage level converter is required to interface it with the microcontroller or a computer. The interface board shown in Figure 11 consists of a MAX232 voltage level translator and voltage regulators. It is used to interface the XBee RF module with a computer. Bonfring International Journal of Power Systems and Integrated Circuits, Vol. 1, Special Issue, December 2011 42 ISSN 2250 1088 | 2011 Bonfring
Figure 11: Attaching the XBee PRO OEM RF Module With The Serial Interface Board. F. 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. IV. CONCLUSION The paper described a simple method to implement a wireless embedded 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 communication and monitoring. By using clip-on (split-core design) current sensors and enclosing the whole transmitter unit in a detachable casing, the system can be easily mounted on the line without interrupting the power flow through the line. Using high data rate, multichannel, Bluetooth transceivers [11] the digital samples can be transmitted in real time for more detailed analysis of the current waveform on the line. V. REFERENCES [1] Zhou Yao, Wang Wei, Xu Lijie, Ni Pinghao, Wang Lin, "Transmission Line Temperature on-line Monitoring System Based on ZigBee", International Conference on Sustainable Power Generation and Supply, 2009. [2] 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. [3] Alessandro Ferrero, "Meter Voltage Measurement", in John G. Webster (ed.), Electrical Measurement, Signal Processing and Displays, pp. 1.20 - 1.21, CRC Press, 2004. [4] Sid Katzen, "The Quintessential PIC Microcontroller", Springer-Verlag, 2000. [5] XBee PRO OEM RF Module Reference Manual, Digi International Inc., 2008. [6] PIC18F4550 Datasheet, Microchip Technology Inc.,2007. [7] Wikipedia-The Free Encyclopedia [Online]. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/smart_grid [8] Yosuke Tanaka, Tatsutoshi Shioda, Takashi Kurokawa, Junji Oka, Kazuyuki Ueta, Toshiharu Fukuoka, "Power Line Monitoring System using Fiber Optic Power Supply", Volume: 16, Issue: 3, Pages: 257-261, Optical Review, 2010 [9] Mihailovic, P, Petricevic, S, Stojkovic, Z, Radunovic, J.B, "Development of a portable fiber-optic current sensor for power systems monitoring", Vol. 53, Issue. 1, pp. 24 - 30, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, February 2004. [10] Zdravko Balorda, Peter Suhel, "Electro-optical Transmission Line Current Monitor", Vol. 3, pp. 1229 - 1231, Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics, ISIE '99, 1999. [11] "2.4-GHz Bluetooth low energy System-on-Chip" CC2540F128 Datasheet, Texas Instruments, Revised July 2011.
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