Design and implementation of low-cost SMS based monitoring system of distribution transformers

Gathering information from distribution transformers is very important in order to monitor and control the entire electric distribution grid efficiently and reliably. It acts as a decision support system to assist the grid operation engineers with information helps to estimate the load, fix problems and identify the week points in the grid. The objective of this paper is to build a system to acquire the remote electrical signals from distribution transformers such as voltage, current, power and temperature; then send these values to a monitoring node via Short Message Service, SMS, along with exact date and time of measuring. At the monitoring node, software is built to receive the information, save into databases and also display the data on a screen for use by the operation engineers. Tests conducted on the system have shown that the monitoring node continues to receive periodic status data. Observed Intermittent delay is attributed to the congestion in the Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM network.