A Real-Time Reliable Condition Assessment System for 500kV Transmission Towers Based on Stress Measurement

Transmission power towers play an important role in power delivery systems. In recent years, some important results on reliability of transmission towers have been obtained based on theoretical analysis, but there are very few practical application systems of real-time condition monitoring. This paper proposes a new real-time reliable condition assessment system for 500kV transmission power towers based on stress measurement. The necessity of such systems and the architecture of the online monitoring system will first be presented. Through calculating the stress distribution condition of different components of the transmission tower under typical working conditions, those positions with relatively high failure probability in the transmission tower can be identified monitored for installing the stress sensors on them. A new method is presented for calculating the reliability index of the transmission tower structure is also developed based on the mechanical structure of the tower. In particular, the tower structure is simplified to a series system, and the Ditlevsen’s bounds is used to estimate the reliability of the tower system. Finally, a designed example for the online reliable condition assessment procedure is given using a 500kV oxytropis tower as an illustration.