A novel method for vegetation encroachment monitoring of transmission lines using a single 2D camera.

The dangerous, overgrown vegetation/trees under high voltage transmission lines right-of-ways (ROWs) have caused severe blackouts/flashovers due to interference with power lines which leads to short circuiting among the conductors. Therefore, these dangerous encroachments are monitored periodically along the electrical distribution networks ROWs through visual inspection, or by airborne system. Each of these methods has its own attributes and limitations and have proved to be costly, time consuming and not much accurate. In these circumstances, it is necessary for the electrical utilities to review their vegetation management practices so as to avoid incidents of unintended encroachments. In tropical countries, overgrown vegetation is a common cause for power line failure. This paper proposes an innovative concept of utilizing a single camera for monitoring dangerous vegetation (trees, shrubs and plants, etc.) under transmission lines ROWs. The main focus is on using an imaging device (camera) integrated on each transmission pole to automate inspection for the vegetation encroachments endangering the transmission lines. These cameras are envisioned to be connected wirelessly to each other, forming a series of wireless camera networks that can be monitored remotely. A single camera mounted on power poles acquires images and sends them wirelessly to the base station. At base station, algorithm (software) trained by image processing and pattern recognition techniques is used to identify (height, depth, and width of encroached vegetation, etc.) excess vegetation encroachments within and outside ROWs. The performance evaluation of a real time developed test-bed scenario proves the feasibilities of integrating the method for transmission line maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]