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.

Keywords---Power Line, Wireless Communication,
ZigBee, Monitoring.

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.