HariharaVarma I, Namitha R M, Sunil G N, Dr. H. V. Kumaraswamy
In electrical substations transformers are the most vital units, which have to be taken care against electrical surges, overloading, overheating etc. to avoid catastrophic disasters. Rise in temperature of the transformer is one of the crucial parameters that is to be measured. This paper discusses the design and development of a microcontroller based Thermo-vision scanning for real time monitoring of vital elements in the substation and transmission of real time data using wireless media. The system consists of transmitter, wireless media and receiver. This system consists of web camera which is connected to a PC along with wireless communication facility. The real time video of target nodes is received through web camera. The received video is processed using MATLAB and based on the intensity variations temperature values are assigned at particular instant of time. These temperature values are transmitted to the receiver using Xbee RF modules. The received temperature values are stored in MYSQL database. At normal loading at the transformer, whenever the power flow increases, the temperature at the target also increases. The continuous increase in power flow may lead to hotspot condition resulting in damage to the equipment. A GUI is created which alerts the maintenance person of the overloading condition.