Visual live-line condition monitoring of composite insulators

Today's society has an ever increasing demand for electrical energy. The UK's core electrical infrastructure is approximately 60 years old and is reaching the end of its originally intended lifespan. However it is not economically viable to completely replace aging components; a better solution being to actively monitor infrastructure components and perform maintenance as required. This paper focuses on the monitoring of transmission line insulators. It reports on the initial stages of the development of a system for visually inspecting exposed surfaces of composite insulators under live-line conditions, whilst mounted to the insulator itself. Various image capture mechanisms are discussed and detail is provided on chosen solution. Data transmission experimentation is presented from the viewpoint of ASCII data, which can be subsequently replaced with digital images. Results presented indicate that a moderate wireless communication channel is perfectly viable under high field strength conditions and indicate no reason why higher bandwidth communication mechanisms should not also function effectively. ©2010 IEEE.