Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting System to Detect Winding Deformation in Power Transformers

One common use of energy harvesting systems is the installation on applications where the access to conventional sources of energy is difficult due to availability, space constraints, environmental hazards or sealed equipment. In this work, we propose an alternative use of an energy harvesting system based on a piezoelectric that takes the vibration of a transformer tank due to winding deformations and hence helps to monitor the condition of the equipment. The system consists on a cantilever piezoelectric beam with a mass tuned to the resonant frequency of the vibration. The output of the piezoelectric is connected to a quadrupler, a low-drop regulator and a capacitive storage. The harvested voltage is planned to supply a low power microprocessor that detects changes in the vibration measurements to determine an abnormal behavior of the transformer. This work introduces the causes of abnormal vibration of transformers, describes the installation of the piezoelectric on a model that generates the same acceleration as the vibration of a transformer tank and studies the capability of charging capacitors to determine the feasibility of the method.