Published by : International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)

http://www.ijert.org ISSN: 2278-0181

Vol. 8 Issue 04, April-2019

IoT based Distribution Transformer Health

Monitoring System using Arduino, Nodemcu and
Thingspeak
Biju Rajan B1, Amanraj S2, Akhil S3, Nayana S4
1
Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, VKCET, Thiruvananthapuram.
2,3,4,
Student, Dept. of EEE, VKCET, Thiruvananthapuram.

Abstract— Transformers are the main building block in a (A) Overload / Overcurrent: Overload / Overcurrent is the
power system. Any damages in transformers adversely affects flow of fault current occurring in the power system
the balance of a power system. The damages are mainly through the transformer. These condition last for a short
occurring due to overloading and inefficient cooling. The main duration of about or less than 2 seconds as protection
objective of the is real time monitoring of the health conditions
of the distribution transformer using IOT technology. The
relays isolate the power system.
parameters such as temperature, voltage and current of a (B) Over / Under voltage: Over voltage results when
transformer are monitored, processed and recorded in servers. voltage to frequency ratio exceeds 1.05 pu at full load
For this purpose, we use three sensors interfaced with Arduino. and 1.10 pu during no load condition.
The recorded data can be send using Wi-Fi module and (C) Temperature Rise: Transformers are generally
accessed from anywhere around the world using IOT technology designed to work for 24 hours with an average ambient
using HTTP protocol. This helps in identifying without human temperature of 300 C. Over voltage and over current causes
dependency. This helps in identifying and solving a problem an increase of oil temperature which induce failure of
before a failure without human dependency. insulation of transformer winding.
Keywords—IoT technology, cloud, server
(D) Oil level fault: Oil present in transformers provides
cooling and insulation. Temperature could reduce the oil
I. INTRODUCTION level and its reduction beyond a required level affects
The distribution transformer directly provides the low cooling and insulation.
voltage users with power supply. Thus, the working condition III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
of the transformer plays an important role in distribution
network. The transformers must be operated in rated The proposed project is about acquiring real time status
condition for their long life. This is not possible during of transformer health parameters. Temperature, voltage and
entire working periods. Overloading and deficient cooling of current of transformers are monitored and send over
transformers can cause unexpected failure in transformers internet The live tracking of these parameters can be
which can disturb delivering of electricity over many done using IOT technology from anywhere around the
consumers. The manual checkup of rise in voltage, rise in world .This is cost effective in nature. Thus the responsible
ambient temperature, load current etc. tends to be more authority can access information on any power failure or
complex as incidental parameters cannot be accessed [1]. maintenance.
In IoT, interaction between the physical and digital
worlds using sensors and actuators are carried out. A sensor
or a network of sensors are used to sense the physical
parameters or the respective environment. These
processed sensor output are then send to the main server or
cloud with the help of various network devices. The data
can be accessed over internet from anywhere around the
world. Monitoring and controlling form the basic objective
of IoT technology. Hence IoT based monitoring is preferred
more than manual monitoring. The system is a real time
monitoring of transformer parameters such as voltage,
current and temperature. This will help to identify the faults
before a serious failure occurs.

II. FAULTS IN TRANSFORMERS

The major faults occurring in a transformer are
overload, over / under voltage, temperature rise, oil level
fault etc[2]. Fig 1. Block diagram of proposed system

IJERTV8IS040459 www.ijert.org 673

(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
Published by : International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
http://www.ijert.org ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 8 Issue 04, April-2019

It consists of arduino board, node mcu, voltage ACS712 consists of a low offset, precise
sensor, temperature sensor, current sensor and power supply linear Hall effect sensor circuit having a copper
as shown in the fig 1. The sensors sense the parameters and conduction path around the die surface. The hall effect
send this to arduino nano. It processes it and send to WiFi circuit convert the electromagnetic field produced during
module. current flow through the copper part to output voltage.
IV. HARDWARE COMPONENTS
C. VOLTAGE SENSOR CIRCUIT
The project is designed to emit a reduced size and maximum
efficiency. The components used are Arduino, temperature
sensor, current sensor, voltage sensor circuit and Node MCU
[3]
.

A. TEMPERATURE SENSOR- LM 35
Temperature sensor is used to sense the current
temperature status of a transformer or generator. It has
three pins as shown in fig 2.The output obtained from the
temperature sensor is proportionally dependent on the
temperature in degree Celsius sensed. The operating
temperature ranges from -550 C to 1500 C. It draws about
60 micro ampere from the supply and has reduced self Fig 3. Voltage measurement circuit.
heating .It does not tend to possess a temperature rise
more than 0.1 0C in still air. For every 0 C rise or fall It is a combination of IN4007 diode, a step-down
in temperature the output response will be 10mV transformer, variable resistor 47K Ω, capacitor 1microF 25V,
variation. This LM35 operates from 4V to 30V. It has + 1 5V Zennor diode. Usually 5V output is obtained during
/ 40 C of typical nonlinearity. Pin description is as shown in 250V. variable resistance is adjusted to get the output.
the table.1. AC Voltage = (230/1024) * ADC_ Value

D. NODE MCU V3
Node MCU is an open source IoT platform. It
includes firmware which runs on the ESP8266 Wi-Fi
SoC from Espressif Systems, and hardware which is
based on the ESP -12 module. This is a single board
microcontroller. The operating system is XTOS.This is
version 3 and it is based on ESP - 12E. Multiple GPIO
pins on the board allow us to connect the board
with other peripherals and are capable of generating
PWM, I2C, SPI, and UART serial communications. USB
to UART converter is added on the module that helps
in converting USB data to UART data which mainly
Fig 2. LM 35 temperature sensor understands the language of serial communication.
Instead of the regular USB port, MicroUSB port is
Table.1: pin description of temperature sensor lm35 included in the module that connects it with the
computer for programming and powering up the board
Pin no Pin name Description as shown in fig 5 . LED blinks giving the current status
Input supply of the module if it is running properly when connected
Vcc
1 voltage: +5V with the computer. The power voltage for USB be kept
Analog output Usually +6 V to -1 around 5 V. It has a memory of about 128kBytes. Storage
2
Voltage V. is about 4Mbytes.
3 Ground Ground: 0V

B. CURRENT SENSOR ACS 712

ACS712 current sensor produces an analog output
voltage proportional to the current sensed by the
terminals. The current sensor can operate from an voltage
of 5V. Even high AC mains current can be measured.
The sensors are based on the Allegro ACS712ELC chip.
These sensors are available full scale reading of 5A, 20A
and 30A. For a 30A sensor the output sensitivity s
66mV/A and it can measure a current from 30A to -
30A range.

IJERTV8IS040459 www.ijert.org 674

(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
Published by : International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
http://www.ijert.org ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 8 Issue 04, April-2019

• Max. current rating 40mA

• USB mini
• Analog pins 8
• Flash memory 16KB or 32KB
• SRAM 1KB OR 2KB
• Crystal oscillator 16MHz
• EEPROM 512 bytes or 1KB
• USART Yes

The important parts of a typical arduino nao board is

depicted in fig 6. It has a dimension of about 4.5cm * 1.9cm *
1.5cm. It weighs about 29g.

Fig 4. Node MCU v3

The arduino nano and Node MCU exchange data

through serial communication. The Node MCU will be
treated as master and arduino nano act as slave during this Fig 6 arduino nano
communication. Arduino acts according to the instructions
given by Node MCU. V. IoT TECHNOLOGY
IoT is an interconnection of many physical devices
by using internet. The controlling and monitoring of any
physical devices or parameters are possible with the help of
IoT technology

A.ThingSpeak
It is an open – source internet of things applications.
This provides with some apps that let analysing and
visualising the data send by WiFi module. There is a
ThingSpeak channel provided. These channels store the data.
The channel provide provision for sending, processing and
accessing the data when needed. The master device Node
MCU sends the data using HTTP protocol.

Fig 5. Interconnection of arduino nano and Node MCU

E ARDUINO NANO

It is based on ATMEGA328P microcontroller. It

works with a mini-USB cable. It is a small sized one.
operating voltage is 5V, with an input voltage variation of 7
to 12V. it has 14 digital pins, 8 analog pins, 2 reset pins and 6
power pins. Arduino nano is provided with a crystal oscillator
of frequency 16MHz. It cannot be supplied power with an
external source. Flash memory is16KB or 32KB. This is
programmed using arduino IDE.the serial communication is Fig 7. Thingspeak showing chart
achieved by digital pins like pin0 (Rx0) and pin 1 (Tx).
Specifications VI. RESULT AND OBSERVATION

• Microcontroller ATMEGA328P The system consisting of arduino and sensors senses

• Operating voltage 5V the transformer health parameters. The data are collected and
• Input voltage 7-12V a node mcu unit communicates with ThingSpeak. The
received real time data is processed by it. This data is send
• Digital i/o pins 14
using HTTP protocol. The accessed readings can be
• PWM 6 out of 14 digital pins
visualized in ThingSpaek platform.

IJERTV8IS040459 www.ijert.org 675

(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
Published by : International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
http://www.ijert.org ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 8 Issue 04, April-2019

VII. CONCLUSION

The transformers play a vital role in distribution part of

power system. Therefore the monitoring and protection of
transformer is very crucial. This system introduces a new
and improved method of transformer health parameter
monitoring using IoT. The sensors incorporated in the system
collect the data of transformer health parameters such as
voltage, temperature and current. These data arre send to an
IoT platform, ThingSpeak using. These data can be sent and
accessed using HTTP protocol. Thus the real time data
collection, storage and monitoring of the transformer health
parameters are possible with the system.

REFERENCES

1. Abdul-Rahman AI-Ali, Abdul Khaliq & Muhammad Arshad “GSM-

Fig 8 hardware components Based Distribution Transformer Monitoring System,” IEEE
MELECON 2004, May 12-15,2004, Dubrovnik, Croatia.
2. K. Sridhar, M. Assarudeen, J.Ranjith Kumar, E.Sarathbabu
“Transformer Health Monitoring And Control Through
Arduino,”IJAERD – International Journel of Advanced Engineering
and Research, vol. 5, Issue 04, 2018.
3. Monika Agarwal, Akshaypandya,” GSM Based Condition Monitoring
of Transformer,”IJSRD - International Journal for Scientific Research
& Development, Vol. 1, Issue 12, 2014 , ISSN (online): 2321-0613 .

Fig 9 website view

IJERTV8IS040459 www.ijert.org 676

(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)