Development of a real-time monitoring system for controlling tensioning guy wires in transmission lines

In all transmission lines in Brazil, supervision and monitoring of the towers are made through either regular inspections in the field or the identification of irregularities. In this case, the Company starts an administrative procedure or use this information for planning the next survey or even the displacement to the field for the investigation and immediately repair such irregularity. The ETEP transmission line is located in the Northern part of the country, due to its features (guyed towers and installed on land and places of difficult access), deserves special attention on the monitoring. Possible sensors and information systems were investigated and then built a prototype of real-time monitoring system which was installed on a tower. This prototype has been validated in the field. Among the issues shown in this article are: technology survey in order to monitor the tensions on guy wires; and the description of prototype validated in the field.