2008 International Conference on High Voltage Engineering and Application, Chongqing, China, November 9-13, 2008

Research on Power Supply Employed in Ices RealTime Monitoring System of High-Voltage Transmission Lines
Yin Ting, Chen Xuanshu, Du Yan, He Yejun
Electric Power Research Institute of SGCC, Wuhan 430074 China
Abstract- The research on the real time monitoring of the transmission lines is one of the directions for the power grid technologies. Seeing that the terminals of data acquisition system (DAS) of the real time monitoring of the transmission lines had to be located on the top of the tower, they were always in an unattended state, which brought out a protrusive problem of the power supply. This paper described a sort of power supply system featured as a hybrid of capacitors and solar batteries. The design of this power supply device must consider some important factors, such as how to take advantage of solar energy as full as possible and isolate from the high voltage electromagnetic interference. There are also many concrete details in the design of this supply device featured as a hybrid of super capacitors and solar batteries. The capacity of capacitors and solar batteries should also be deliberated to guarantee the maintainable supply at least one week even in the overcast and rainy days. This paper brought out some opinions on the solutions of the problems mentioned above. Related simulations were done to prove the effect of this power supply system of the monitoring system for transmission lines. The result showed that a hybrid energy storing system can play a better performance than single entire energy storing device.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Snow and ice storms plagued southern China since earlier 2008, leading to severe damage to the power grid in 19 provinces. High-voltage power lines are designed to withstand about 30mm of ice. But during the prolonged and large-scale snowstorms this year, the average was more than double that, and up to 60mm in some places, which caused severe collapse of power towers and broken of the power lines. The research on the real time monitoring of the transmission lines is one of the directions for the power grid technologies. The coated ice monitoring device is an important subsystem of the main real-time monitoring system of the transmission lines. The device is designed to offer the meteorological data and situation of ice coated around the lines on-line, which can help to make forecast and alarm of the ice accident, so as to lessen the loss of the power grid. Seeing that the terminals of data acquisition system (DAS) had to be located on the top of the tower, they were always in an unattended state, which brought out a protrusive problem of the power supply. The isolation and electromagnetic interference of high voltage made it hard to get power supply

from the transmission line directly. Hence a new technology using the super capacitors with solar batteries to supply the DAS has been advanced. The super capacitors can work in a wider temperature range (-40 C70 C ) than conventional batteries (normal -20 C 50 C ). This remarkable advantage is vital for the function of those power supply systems working in the cold north area. Meanwhile, capacitors have the lower leak current rate and more stable performance. The shortcut of capacitor is that the energy storing density of capacitor is lower than batteries. So a hybrid energy storing system using both super capacitors and Li-batteries may play a better performance than single entire energy storing device [1]. The design of this power supply device must consider some important factors, such as how to take advantage of solar energy as full as possible and isolate from the high voltage electromagnetic interference[2]. There are also many concrete details in the design of this supply device featured as a hybrid of super capacitors and solar batteries, for example, the power loss during the systems running, the local climatic condition, the probable run-time and wait-time of the system, etc. The capacity of capacitors and solar batteries should also be deliberated to guarantee the maintainable supply at least one week even in the overcast and rainy days [3]. This paper brought out some opinions on the solutions of the problems mentioned above. Related simulations were done to prove the effect of this power supply system of the monitoring system for transmission lines. II. POWER SUPPLY SYSTEM A. Configuration of Power Supply System Figure 1 shows the main structure of power supply system. In the figure1, the system consisted of five parts: solar batteries, super capacitor group, additional Li-batteries, central control circuit and monitoring unit. In the daytime, solar batteries changed the solar energy into electrical energy to charge the capacitors and auxiliary Li-batteries distinguishingly. At the same time, the one which was not charged powered the monitoring system. In the nighttime or rainy days, capacitors gave out the energy stored to power the monitoring system. Thus a stable power supply for monitoring system can be achieved. The central control circuit played a

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role of managing the power source group to optimize performance of the whole energy system. The five switches K1~K5acted following the order of central control CPU.

Figure 1. Configuration of the power supply system.

In this whole charging phase, the charging current, whether large or small, mainly flowed into the super capacitors group. The charging and working current for Li-batteries kept constant and relatively stable. Thus the over charge for batteries could be prevented [6]. In the discharging time, namely in the nighttime or rainy time, current emitted by the solar batteries decreased. When it decreased to a limit level in which both capacitors and Libatteries could not be charged, open K1 to prevent a back discharge to the solar batteries. Without charge source, the super capacitors would continue to supply the monitoring unit and charge the batteries. When the voltage of capacitors decreased lower than that of batteries, K3 and K5 opened. The batteries supplied the monitors alone till new solar energy came. Double energy storing devices made it sure to power the monitoring unit. C. Other Details To isolate from the high voltage electromagnetic interference, the whole device of power supply system must be settled in a metal closet which functioned as shielding case. All the signal transmission line may use optical fiber instead of traditional copper wire. The switches (K1~K5) could be one of electronic switches such as IGBT, MOSFET, GTO, et al. III. SIMULATION The equivalent model of this hybrid energy system was set up in the simulation environment of MATLAB SIMPOWERSYSTEM. The performance and its influence factors were analyzed with charging source changing with the sunlight. Figure 2 showed power emitted from solar batteries in 24h.

B. Energy Management Strategy and Tactics In order to raise the efficiency of PV generation system, the system was usually designed to work in the MPPT (Maximum Power Point) way. Hence both the output current and voltage of solar batteries would be variable. For the monitoring system, it needs a stable 5V (3.3V) voltage and about 1A current supply [4]. Then, the main task of central control circuit is to convert the fluctuant power source into a stable and reliable constant source. Before the hybrid energy system began to work, the super capacitors and Li-batteries must be pre-charged respectively to prevent over current caused by the transient change in the charging circuit. Usually the initial voltage of super capacitors keeps higher than batteries. During the charging phase, the solar batteries emitted current to charge the super capacitor, while the switch K1, K3 closed. Li-batteries supplied the power of the monitoring unit, while K5 opened and K2, K4 closed. The stored energy of capacitor can be calculated by the formula below: E=CU /2
2

(1)

If the capacitance C is large enough, while the charging energy is limited by the solar batteries, the voltage across the super capacitors would not raise rapidly even if the voltage of charging source was much higher than that of capacitors. So the capacitors group can be considered as constant voltage source. During the Li-batteries working time, the Li-batteries performed as a constant voltage source until the energy stored in batteries were consumed 80%. Using a voltage detector, the voltage dip of batteries can be easily detected. K5 then must be closed. The super capacitors parallel with the Li-batteries supplied the monitoring unit. Since the super capacitors remained a higher voltage than batteries, the super capacitors would charge the batteries and at the same time be charged themselves by the solar batteries [5].

p o w e r ( p u )

Figure 2. Power emitted from solar batteries in 24h

As to the actively controlled hybrid, a method mentioned above which can make the charge current and output power of battery nearly constant was adopted. The discharge and charge process of battery is optimized obviously. Figure 3 showed the input and output of super capacitors and Li-batteries, where the capacitance of super capacitors was set to 6000F, and the

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voltage pre-charged of capacitors group was 5.4V. The whole simulation time is 100s.

Figure 3 (b) showed the currents of solar batteries (1), super capacitors (2), monitoring system (3), Li-batteries (4). We can also see that the current of load remained stable about 1A and the Li- batteries always emitted a stable constant small current. The large variant current flowed through the super capacitors only, which can protect the Li-batteries well. The energy management strategy and tactics had been proved feasible. IV. CONCLUSION This paper focused on the research of hybrid power energy system which may supply the ices real-time monitoring system of high-voltage transmission lines. It gave the energy management strategy and tactics. The simulation result showed that a hybrid energy storing system can play a better performance than single entire energy storing device. Related problems, such as the stability of this hybrid system and how to save the cost of it, will be undergone a further research. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] BarkerPP. Ultra capacitors for use in power quality and distributed resource applications, A.2002 IEEE Power Eng. Society Summer Meeting . Chicago, USA, 2002 13162320. John J. The new England electric photovoltaic systems research and demonstration project . IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, 1990, 5 (2):2842289. Takahashi I. Development of a simple photovoltaic system for interconnection of utility power system. Drives and Energy Systems for Industrial Growth Power Electronics. [S. l.] , 1996: 88293. Sun Wuben, Zeng Yi, Jiang Xiucheng. Design and realization of power supply system for outdoor on-line monitoring device, High Voltage Engineering, vol. 33, 2007, pp.178-182. TANG Xisheng, QI Zhiping. Study on an actively controlled batteryultra capacitor hybrid in stand-alone PV system, Advanced Technology of Electrical Engineering and Energy, vol.25, 2006, pp.3741. PayS, BaghzouzY. Effectiveness of battery-supercapacitor combination in electric vehicles, A.IEEE Bologna PowerTech.Conf.C.Bologna, Italy, 2003 16.

(a)

(b) Figure 3. Input and output of the hybrid power supply system

Figure 3(a) showed input performance of charging the capacitors. Curve1 was the output voltage of charging source, meaning solar batteries. Curve 2 was the voltage on the monitoring system. We can see that though the charge source changed its output, the load voltage can still remain stable 5V.

[6]

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