Digitalisierte, rechtssichere und emissionsarme flugmobile Inspektion und Netzdatenerfassung mit automatisierten Drohnen

This paper serves as a quick guide for the selection process of contactless electrical sensors involved in unmanned aerial systemsbased gridmonitoring applications. Since the selection criteria for such sensors can be enormous and hence challenging, the major key points were elaborated after a thorough review of relevant work. The review presented in this paper, composedof seven current sensors and three voltage sensors topologies, is critically investigated. In terms of flexibility, complexity, sensitivity, and other performance indices, it is concluded that an “all-optical” dual voltage and current contactless sensor would represent an optimum choice to be employed within remote measuring applications. The mainrecommended feature of the suggested sensor is its ability to freely measure electrical quantities while being “relatively” far from the electrical transmission line, implying no need to be “clamped” all around it. By presenting an informative background for intelligent field sensing applications, this paper also suggests the future work relevant to the studied topic.

The evolving technologies regarding Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have led to their extended applicability in diverse domains, including surveillance, commerce, military, and smart electric grid monitoring. Modern UAV avionics enable precise aircraft operations through autonomous navigation, obstacle identification, and collision prevention. The structures of avionics are generally complex, and thorough hierarchies and intricate connections exist in between. For a comprehensive understanding of a UAV design, this paper aims to assess and critically review the purpose-classified electronics hardware inside UAVs, each with the corresponding performance metrics thoroughly analyzed. This review includes an exploration of different algorithms used for data processing, flight control, surveillance, navigation, protection, and communication. Consequently, this paper enriches the knowledge base of UAVs, offering an informative background on various UAV design processes, particularly those related to electric smart grid applications. As a future work recommendation, an actual relevant project is openly discussed.

This paper aims to design the fundamental basis for an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS)-driven, remote, and non-invasive current sensing application. Using the COMSOL software, the methodology presented here consists of the Computer Aided Design (CAD) for stranded Transmission Line (TL) geometries composed of 7 to 91 sub-filaments and discretized via tetrahedral-element-based meshes. The radiated Magnetic Field (MF) around each TL is then solved by means of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) after selecting the proper materials for TLs under the coil geometry analysis study. For each TL, all resultant MFs’ norms are presented as tabulated data, with respect to the inducing currents. Eventually, the complex mathematical model needed to evaluate these MFs, radiated around stranded TLs, is surpassed by the scalable models designed through this study. The min/max MFs radiated around each TL resulting from the min/max injected current values are hence obtained. This would serve in the accurate choosing/positioning of magnetic-based sensors in UAS applications, reliably. Additionally, related future works are concretely presented.

Smart grids yield in an efficient energy distribution, driven by advanced grid management and diverse technologies’ integration. For instance, the remote monitoring of transmission lines, facilitates the development process of conventional electrical networks into smart grids. One form of such remote monitoring applications can be actuated by means of a drone, which carries an embedded intelligent sensor. These drone-based applications referred to as Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), thus allow an instantaneous surveillance of the actual status of transmission lines, remotely. Accordingly, this paper presents an experimental setup of an “all-optical” electrical sensor, confronted with different forced voltage/current (V/I) levels, in order to test its feasibility for future applications in drone-controlled, electric grid monitoring processes. After analyzing different measurements’ outputs, and comparing them with reference values outputted by reference V/I sensors, the resulting deviated errors are tabulated and justified. Furthermore, the exploration of the studied sensor’s pros and cons, and by taking into consideration the space/weight restrictions that a drone-based application obtrudes, related future work is suggested.