Innovative optical systems and sensors for on line monitoring of high voltage overhead lines and power components

Optical systems and Optical Fiber Sensors offer a decisive solution to monitor critical parameters in presence of high electromagnetic interferences as in the case of the T&D network. These sensors can operate safely and, therefore, they are suitable for integration and security application to on-service electrical equipment. In this work we report some examples of RSE optical systems and sensors prototypes ad-hoc developed to potentially overcome some problems currently addressed by conventional systems. These mainly concern the remote sag monitoring on overhead lines, the on line detection of conductive defects in High Voltage insulator chains and the on line detection of the oil-paper degradation phenomena in power transformers.