IoT BASED UNDERGROND CABLE FAULT DETECTION MONITORING SYSTEM

Abstract

Underground cables are used for power applications where it is impractical, difficult, or dangerous to use the overhead lines. They are widely used in densely populated urban areas, in factories, and even to supply power from the overhead posts to the consumer premises. The underground cables have several advantages over the overhead lines; they have smaller voltage drops, low chances of developing faults and have low maintenance costs. However, they are more expensive to manufacture, and their cost may vary depending on the construction as well as the voltage rating. Underground cables are prone to a wide variety of faults due to underground conditions, wear and tear, rodents etc. Diagnosing the fault source is difficult and entire cable should be taken out from the ground to check and fix faults. The project work is intended to detect the location of fault in underground cable lines from the base station in km using an ATmega328 controller. To locate a fault in the cable, the cable must be tested for faults. This prototype uses the simple concept of Ohms law. The current would vary depending upon the length of fault of the cable. In the urban areas, the electrical cables run in underground instead of overhead lines. Whenever the fault occurs in underground cable it is difficult to detect the exact location of the fault for process of repairing that particular cable. The proposed system finds the exact location of the fault. The prototype is modeled with a set of resistors representing cable length in km and fault creation is made by a set of switches at every known distance to cross check the accuracy of the same. In case of fault, the voltage across series resistors changes accordingly, which is then fed to an ADC to develop precise digital data to a programmed PIC IC that further displays fault location in distance. The fault occurring distance, phase, and time is displayed on a 16X2 LCD interfaced with the microcontroller. IOT is used to display the information over Internet using the Wi-Fi module ESP8266.