The University of Akron

Amir Mehdi Pasdar

Yilmaz Sozer

Nathan Ida

Jose Alexis De Abreu-Garcia

A smart sensor network for power grid health monitoring includes a plurality of spaced sensors that are magnetically coupled to the power transmission line to be monitored. The sensors include a signal injection unit and a signal sensing unit. As such, one of the sensors acts to inject, via its signal injection unit, a high frequency signal through the magnetic coupling into the power transmission line, while sensors on either side of the signal injecting sensor act to block the injected signal, which is then detected by the signal sensing unit of the injecting sensor, and is used to measure the impedance of the power transmission line segment being analyzed. Based on the difference between a pre-measured impedance of the power transmission line being monitored and the actual impedance value of the power transmission line being measured by the sensor, the health of the power line can be obtained.

Smart sensor network for power grid health monitoring

A system and method for fast, automatic balancing of an AC bridge utilizes a two-stage process. During the first stage, the phase of the bridge voltage is matched, while during the second stage, the amplitude is minimized. The voltage matching process is based on halving the range of measured voltage amplitudes at each step, using two samples to identify the next half-range, resulting in an n-step recursive algorithm with 'n' defining the resolution of the process. As such, the phase-matching process requires only three samples per step, and only four steps for 1&#xb0; resolution. Consequently, the computational power needed to carry out the two-stage process is minimal, requiring only comparison of the three sampled voltages, thereby resulting in a balancing process that is performed fast and efficiently.

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Solon, OH, United States of America

Amir Mehdi Pasdar