Model based monitoring of ice accretion on overhead power lines

Abstract

Atmospheric ice accretion is a natural phenomenon in cold climate regions. On overhead transmission lines, the ice load can cause severe damage and can cause critical situations for those relying on this infrastructure. Even fatal casualties have been documented due to the lapse of transmission lines. Capacitive sensing has been reported a feasible approach for detecting ice accretion events and autonomous sensor systems have been presented. The automated extracting of information about the state of ice accretion, e.g. the layer thickness, from capacitive measurement readings is a vital part for the usability of such systems. In this paper we report on a model based approach for estimating ice accretion parameters from capacitive sensor readings. We identify critical input parameters and present the design of a surrogate model for a capacitive ice sensor. For this we present a test rig to generate ice in a climate chamber. We finally demonstrate the estimation of ice thickness from measurements.