Voltage transducer for monitoring of high voltage overhead lines

In this paper, a voltage transducer is proposed based on the distribution of electric field around high voltage overhead line conductors. Finite-element software is used to compute the electric field distribution around the high voltage lines and the transducer. A cylindrical-shaped voltage transducer is designed and constructed in this work. Laboratory experiments are carried out using the transducer and the effects of varying the integrating capacitors and the transducer height above ground on the output voltage are investigated. A good linearity of output voltage compared with the simultaneous measurement of a calibrated standard high voltage capacitive divider is established. The experiment also observed a relative change in the output voltage when the sensor height is varied in a certain way. These preliminary experiments have demonstrated the feasibility of the transducer to measure the voltage of line conductors. Further enhancement is in progress to enable its use under real overhead lines conditions.