Power line sensornet - a new concept for power grid monitoring

Significant work has been done on the sensing of utility assets. Most proposed approaches have been based on the principle of using few relatively expensive sensors and wireless communication links to provide a sample of data on the status of the power line. This paper introduces 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 a distributed sensor module is proposed 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. Details of implementation and system impact are presented in the paper, along with simulation results