A Self-Powered and Self-Absorbing Wireless Sensor Node for Smart Grid

The health monitoring of electricity transmission systems has been increasingly attracting the scientific community's attention, especially those power transmission towers built in remote and deserted areas. The smart grid provides a realistic solution to the health monitoring problem, but there is a problem that the energy supplies are still constrained by batteries. This article proposes a novel vibration energy harvester to address the power supply challenges of auxiliary equipment mounted on electricity towers or transmission lines. The proposed harvester not only harvests vibration energy when working but also attenuates the vibration amplitude of the transmission line. The structure of the device comprises three modules: a module for capturing vibration, a module for motion conversion, and a power management module. The analytical response under sinusoidal and random excitation is investigated, and the performance of energy harvesting and the effect on vibration is tested. The prototype achieves a maximum power of 183.96 mW when tested using the servo hydraulic mechanical testing and sensing system, and the wireless data transmission experiment proves the power generation ability of the prototype. The experimental results show that the acceleration of the transmission line decreases when the prototype is working.