Telemonitoring of climatic loads on Hydro-Québec 735 kV lines

This paper describes the system that has been set up at some critical points of the Hydro-Québec 11 000-km long 735 kV lines to telemonitor wind and ice loads. It covers hardware aspects such as load and tilt angle sensors, lightning protection, wiring technique, the data logger and transmitter system, as well as power supply, so designed as to have fully autonomous stations. The paper also deals with software aspects such as reduction of measurements to wind and ice loads, whether unbalanced or not, and comparison of these loads to tower strength in order to appreciate severity of loading. Finally, some actual field results generated at the Mont Bélair station during the 1995 winter period are presented and discussed.