Power Source Based on Electric Field Energy Harvesting for Monitoring Devices of High-Voltage Transmission Line

This article proposes a power source based on alternating electric field energy harvesting, which can be used for the condition monitoring devices for a high-voltage (HV) transmission line. The energy-harvesting ability of online and offline harvesters depending on different sizes and installation positions is studied herein through a finite-element simulation. The power source uses a novel energy conversion circuit with a cascaded ladder-type topology that can multiply the power when increasing the number of cascaded stages. We set up an HV experiment platform to test the performances of the energy harvester and the power source. The energy-harvesting ability of the harvester approaches the simulation results. The tested power source with four cascaded stages demonstrates a harvesting ability of 620 
μ
W/
μ
A, making it superior to the reported solutions in previous studies. The proposed circuit shows the latent capability of realizing a higher power density.