Deploying autonomous sensors in a substation area using energy harvesting and wireless transfer of energy

Condition monitoring is essential to electrical power networks. A real-time measurement of equipment operating conditions can reduce maintenance cost and improve supplies reliability. However, the installation cost for wiring monitoring sensors on high voltage (HV) devices can be very high. Providing an autonomous wireless sensor network (WSN) can reduce the installation cost and make the monitoring sensors more accessible in a substation environment. In this work, we study an autonomous WSN in a substation area, using energy harvesting and wireless transfer of energy. In our model energy is first scavenged from the available electric field around high voltage devices and then will be transferred to the sensor by radiating radio frequency (RF) signals. This paper only considers one sensor scenario. However, the method that is proposed here can be generalized to multiple sensors as a future work.