NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

FACULTY OF INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING

FINAL YEAR PROJECT PROPOSAL

BY DARLINGTON CHAMBE (N01415658D)

IOT REMOTE MONITORING AND

PROTECTION OF DISTRIBUTION
TRANSFORMERS

SUPERVISOR: DR B MTUNZI

1|Page
1.1 INTRODUCTION.
ZETDC is a utility company that transmits, distributes and retails electricity throughout
Zimbabwe. It is endowed with many assets such as transformers, electric lines, huge fleet of
motor vehicles and huge numbers of properties such as land buildings. These assets are located
and distributed almost everywhere in Zimbabwe.

Vandalism of electrical equipment in Zimbabwe has become a menace and a costly affair to
the society in terms of safety and low economic activities. Particularly, transformer vandalism
is on the rise year in year out and happens almost everywhere within the country.

Utility companies have enormous amounts of money invested in transformers of all types,
including distribution and power transformer. Operating, maintaining, and inspecting all
power transformers are not an easy work. In order to reduce burden on maintenance of such
transformers a new idea has been discovered.

Theft and vandalism are criminal acts that had really rocked the company and had pushed
company’s costs of operation higher. Scrupulous individuals tempered with electricity
equipment in order to obtain materials such as copper wire, aluminium and transformer oil
which they later sell to make quick money in the black-market.

The company owns thousands of transformers that are distributed across different regions
within the country. It is quite impossible and hard to monitor each and every transformer
physically. Use of technology can assist in such an environment where the equipment is
situated in different regions. Vandalism and siphoning of transformer oil happens anywhere
anytime and this spontaneous action makes it a big challenge to the company. Putting up a
strong and secure system is very important in an attempt to gap the vice.

2|Page
1.2 BACKGROUND.

Transformer oil, copper and aluminium are the main targets of the vandals. Oil mainly used in
transformer for two purposes one is for cooling of transformer and another use is for insulation
purpose. When temperature of transformer goes high, oil level in transformer tank decreases
due to heating effect. For normal operation of transformer oil level should maintain at required
level. If oil level decreases beyond required level, it affect cooling and insulation of the
transformer

It is reported that transformer oil is used in different areas and some of the areas they are
suspected to be of use are:

 mixed with diesel and sold as fuel

 used as fuel for industrial furnaces and as cooling for welding sets
 mixed with vegetable oil and sold as cooking oil
 Used as a cosmetic and treatment for wounds.

1.3 PROBLEM STATEMENT.

When transformers explode some of the problems faced include:-

 ZETDC will be temporarily affected to make revenue from the affected customers.
 Business will stop operations hence creating unemployment or use other source of
energy like generators that might be costly compared to electricity,
 No or low business means no production which lead to less collection of taxes by the
government hence reduced revenue collection in the country,
 ZETDC will meet the cost of replacing the vandalized equipment, which is imported
through the use of limited forex in the nation.

3|Page
1.4 THE SIGNIFICANCE AND JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY.

Current in Zimbabwe and Africa, transformer that a stepping down power for home use are not
being monitored. The only transformers that are being monitored and controlled remotely from
office are the ones on substations and on power stations. Substations and power stations are
monitored and controlled because they are connected to the regional grid where all other power
stations will be connected e.g. the SADC region power grid. They should feed in appropriate
power to the grid which is compatible with other power stations so that no power station will
affect another. Remote monitoring and controlling that is being done on substations allows load
shedding to be done from office and also allows faults to be remotely detected from
office. All the monitoring and controlling that is currently done on substations and power
stations uses power line communication

The following figs shows snippets of the country state of the art local newspapers reporting of
the wide problem that has been hitting the country.

Fig 1.1: 29 DECEMBER 2016 snippet of chronicle article [1].

4|Page
FIG1.2: 10 NOV 2017 THE HERALD SNIPPET ARTICLE [2].

FIG 1.3: 14 JULY 2017 THE HERALD ARTICLE SNIPPET [3]

WHY PROTECTION IS NEEDED IN A TRANSFORMER.

 To minimize damage and interruption to the services.

 Prevents the electric failure so convenience to the consumers.
 Prevents loss of revenue due to outage.
 Reduces down time for repair or replacement which is very high.
 Un-interrupted power supply to the consumers is supplied in-case of overload
 No Wires Involved In The Proposed System. Hence We Can Avoid Power And Data
Loss.

5|Page
  It Can Able To Detect The Faults Due To Over Current, Over Voltage,
Increased Temperature At Real
 Time.
 Monitoring Multiple Transformers Sitting In An Office Is Possible.
 Prefault Condition Is Easily Detected And Cleared At Same Time To Avoid
System Failure. Fault
 Monitoring Requires Less Time Also Use Of Wifi Gives Most Accurate ,Fast Response.
 This Type Of Monitoring Protects Transformer And Overall System So System
Reliability And Stability
 Increases.
 This Type Of Monitoring Provide Significant Benefits For Utility Consumers As
Ideal Power Supply Can
 Be Possible Which Is Free From Fault And Losses.
 Overcurrent,Overvoltage,Overtemperature These Main Faults Are Prevented Using
This Technique .

Some of the anti-vandalism employed by ZETDC are:

 use of air cooled transformers

 securing transformers using Rapid Response alarms
 installation of surveillance cameras
 public awareness campaigns
 Installing units above High voltage lines.
 Installing alarms system on transformer units.
 Relocation of transformers to safer grounds such as home compounds or institutions

JUSTIFICATION

 To minimize damage and interruption to the services.

 Prevents the electric failure so convenience to the consumers.
 Prevents loss of revenue due to outage.
 Reduces down time for repair or replacement which is very high.

6|Page
1.5 METHODOLOGY.

The objectives of the project include:

 Continuous monitoring of transformer health index parameters

o Voltage

o Current

o Oil level

o Oil temperature

Protection system design

Communication Channel interface development:

 Web application for monitoring

 GSM based alerts for alarms

 GSM SMS based alerts.

 Auto circuit break of the transformer.

 Reliable for industrial needs.

 Regular alarm posts on a website

 Load sharing in the case of an overload

Web appli

7|Page
This project aims at monitoring the temperature, voltage and current of a multiple transformers
continuously and protects them from overheating. Since transformers are vital elements of the
electric power transmission and distribution infrastructure, they need to be monitored to
prevent any potential faults. Failures in a transformer can easily costs several million dollars to
either repair or replace, and will also cause a loss of service to customers and revenue until the
symptom is found and repaired.

In transformers the need for monitoring the temperature is very much necessary. Turning
the transformers OFF whenever the temperature is greater than its maximum operating
temperature protects the transformer from damage and also the lifetime of the transformers can
also be increased.

The main aim of this system is distribution transformer monitoring and controlling
through IOT. Also, it sends SMS to a central database via the GSM modem for further
processing. The idea of on-line monitoring system mixes a global service mobile (GSM)
Modem, with chip micro controller and different sensors.

This project objective is to develop low cost solution for monitoring health condition of
remotely located distribution transformers using GSM technology to present premature failure
of distribution transformers and improving reliability of services to the customers.

On top of that regular alarms should be send to a website for monitoring and GSM messages
will be reserved for more critical conditions.

Sometimes a situation may occur when the load on the transformer is suddenly increased above
its rated capacity. When this situation occurs, the transformer will be overloaded and
overheated and damage the insulation of transformer resulting in interruption of supply.
The best solution to avoid the overloading is to operate the number of transformers in parallel.
It is same like parallel operation of transformers

For this purpose two similar types of distribution transformers are used so that, if any one
transformer fails, then immediately another transformer is brought into the circuit during
over loading, over temperatures, input voltage variations and provides conventional 230V
supply to the consumers without burning of transformers.

8|Page
 1.6 PROPOSED SYSTEM MODEL.

AUTO CIRCUIT BREAKER

FUNCTION. GSM BASED SMS ALERTS.

DISTRIBUTION
TRANSFORMER
MONITORING AND
PROTECTION
.PROJECT

IOT ALARM POSTING

FEATURE
LOAD SHARING
CONCEPT DUE TO
OVERLOAD

SENSORY INPUT

TEMPERETURE

CURRENT

VOLTAGE

FIG 1.4: Proposed system architecture

9|Page
1.7 BUDGET

TABLE 1.1 PROJECT ESTIMATED COST

COMPONENT QUANTITY COST

230V AC TRANSFORMER 2 80
TEMPERETURE SENSOR 3 10
RELAY 1 10
CONTROLLER 1 10
GSM MODULE 1 12
WIFI MODULE 1 5
LEVEL SENSOR 2 5
ESTIMATED TOTAL COST $132-00

1.8 CONCLUSION.

Transformer is a vital device, we cannot imagine the power system operation without
them from generating to distribution end, they have effective role in interchanging the voltage
levels at transmission and distribution ranges.

The author believes that this project will go a long way in reducing headache pain which is
being inflicted on ZETDC.

10 | P a g e
References

[1] C. Dube, "10 years jail for $60 oil theft," 29 december 2016. [Online]. Available:
www.chronicle.co.zw/10-years-jail-for-$60-oil-theft.

[2] h. team, "ZETDC gets tough on vandalism," 10 November 2017. [Online]. Available:
https://www.herald.co.zw/zetdc-gets-tough-on-vandalism/. [Accessed 15 july 2018].

[3] h. team, "Transformer vandalism needs to be tackled," HERALD, 14 JULY 2017. [Online].
Available: https://www.herald.co.zw/transformer-vandalism-needs-to-be-tackled/. [Accessed
20 AUGUST 2018].

The ultrasonic sensor which is interfaced with the Arduino as the microcontroller is used to
detect the level of the garbage in the bin. The exact position is noted using a GPS (Global
Positioning System) a navigational facility. A SMS (Short Message Service) is sent via a GSM
(Global System for Mobile Communication) modem that moment when the bin is full
informing the responsible authorities about the status of the bin. The WI-FI module interfaced
with the Arduino is used to get the unique IP address of the SMS and the municipality
authorities are able to see the garbage bin status via a mobile app (K.Harika, 2018).

11 | P a g e
Justification
The proposed project is worthy doing as it is very relevant to the environment. The aim of this
project is to keep the human surroundings clean. As such conserve the precious environment
which has been an area of concern of late. The project is there also to protect the humanity
from unhealthy living conditions. The uncollected garbage become breeding ground for
bacteria and other pathogens which put the health of the people at risk (WHO, 2018). For
example, the 2018 Cholera outbreak in Budiriro a high density suburb in Harare, uncollected
garbage was one of the causes amongst others. The old system which the municipality uses that
that they collect garbage following a predefined schedule has proved to be in adequate since
the bins get full way before the municipality come again. When the bins take long to be
emptied, they begin to rot and produce a very unpleasant smell and thus causing air pollution
hence the need for this project to make sure they are collected in time.
This project also saves on resources mainly fuel and labour. Route optimisation will be used
meaning to say the garbage collecting van will only go to the areas to collect garbage from bins
reported as full unlike the old system when he had to go to all the bins around the area full or
not full. So using the proposed system will save fuel which is at the moment a scarce and
expensive commodity. The garbage collecting vehicles are also saved will depreciate less since
their travelling distance is reduced. Through the use of route optimisation labour cost are
reduced in the sense that where more than one truck driver was supposed to go since they were
going from bin to bin only one truck driver might go as he will be attending to only full bins.
Route optimisation also makes it easy to plan on which truck is going is they will be seeing
through the mobile application which bins are about to get full in advance.
The system is also user friendly as it makes use of an mobile application to see the status of the
bin by simply opening the application in his phone.
The system is not so expensive also as very few hardware is required. The system makes use
of the available resources hence not increasing the budget that much. It makes use of the
internet which is now a common facility in every work place an hence it would not be an issue
implementing it.

12 | P a g e