Development and Testing of 10 kV/60Hz Modular Transformer to Study Strong Electric Field Impacts on Drones in Power Line Inspection Applications

Multi-rotor drones (MR-drones) are increasingly used for power line inspection due to their accuracy and ease of use. However, they can be affected by the strong electric fields around transmission power lines, disrupting their positioning measurements and calculations and causing them to lose control. This paper presents an experimental study of a 10 kV modular transformer as a test setup to investigate impacts of strong electric fields on drones. The presented transformer includes eight 1.25 kV sub-module transformers, leveraging simplicity and scalability. Along with the design methodology and mathematical investigations, the practical difficulties are illustrated. To show the effectiveness of the presented high-voltage transformer, some preliminary experimental results are presented.