Self-powered Triboelectric Vibration Sensor Network Construction for Overhead Transmission Line Vibration Mapping

The frequent aeolian vibrations on overhead transmission lines potentially endanger the line health, this situation is even worse for the high-voltage long-span lines, which has attracted increased attention focused on the online monitoring of vibrations. However, current vibration monitoring methods have limitations in large-scale distributed measurements for the lack of sustainable power supply of sensors. Herein, a self-powered sensor network for the transmission line aeolian vibration is proposed by utilizing the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) as the sensor to acquire vibration signals of transmission lines. As driven by Maxwell's displacement current, the triboelectric vibration sensor is able to provide real-time vibration amplitude and frequency signals with high accuracy and sensitivity. Moreover, a group of sensors is installed on the transmission line to compose the sensor network. Integrated with the developed LabView software, a visual vibration mapping system enabled by the collected multi-point voltage signals has been demonstrated to graph the vibration distribution information of the overall line. This work renders an efficient and intuitive vibration monitoring method for the overhead transmission lines, which is beneficial to the early warning of the line fatigue faults that further ensure the power system stability.