Thermal Monitoring and Protection for Distribution Transformer Under Residential Loading Using Internet of Things

Distribution Transformers (DTs) are usually affected due to overloading and internal hydration which results in overheating, deformation, short circuit and suffocation of windings. This paper presents an efficient and reliable Internet of Things (IoT) based Thermal Monitoring and Protection System (TMPS) for DT under residential loading. The proposed system is divided into Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) and monitoring station. RTU is composed of different feedback control protection systems and wireless communication modules. Temperature and humidity sensing units (THSU) and Current Sensing Unit (CSU) at RTU continuously collect data from oil immersed windings of DT and send it to ThingSpeak server for real-time monitoring, analysis and control. Moreover, the proposed system sends alert emails and buzzers in case of protection failure to the operator. The results demonstrate that IoT based TMPS has affectively addressed the overloading and internal hydration problem of DT with optimized cost and less human interaction.