WPAN Based Preventive Condition Monitoring for Solar Wind Energy Converters in Rural Electrification

Abstract

Though the fast depletion of conventional energy reserves motivating the generation and usage of nonconventional energy sources, the initial investment on wind energy converters and their high maintenance cost due to the height of the wind tower, down time cost due to nonavailability of skilled maintenance technicians on time, are forcing the rural people away from installing the wind energy converters, even though the wind energy and solar energy are the promising non depleting resources available in abundance in rural India. The Government of India is offering subsidies to rural people to solve the problem of the high initial investment to certain extent, but the problem of high cost of maintenance is unattended to. The authors propose a low cost solution to the maintenance problem by developing a preventive condition monitoring system using WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Networks) IEEE 802.15.4 based wireless technology which continuously monitors the health of the energy converter. It reduces the maintenance costs, as the skilled personnel can be hired only as and when needed. It also reduces the down time costs, as the system gives hourly health data of the converter, the preventive maintenance can be affected.