How Self-Powered Sensors Can Reduce Outages
An emerging technology that can create self-powered sensors looks promising in terms of helping utilities reduce the frequency of power outages. In a nutshell, the technology can be used by utilities in a way that enables them to widely deploy sensors for infrastructure monitoring and diagnostic purposes.
How Self-Powered Sensors Work
The underlying technology involves a new material with thermoelectric properties that can convert heat into small amounts of electricity, which in turn can power diagnostic sensors. The material, which is comprised of overlapping layers of iron, vanadium, tungsten, and aluminum that is embedded in silicon crystals, was invented by researchers at Vienna University of Technology.
The main vision for this technology is for utilization in Internet of Things (IoT) devices, but I believe it could be used extensively in the utility industry as well.
Why? Well, for one, I believe that sensors in general are the wave of the future in terms of emergency preparedness, because they can be used to monitor equipment performance to provide an early warning for potential problems, and they can be used to diagnose failures after the fact, including causes of outages. And replacing old-school sensors with self-powered sensors can only increase the efficiency and effectiveness of these monitoring and diagnostic capabilities.
Simply put, this technology would enhance the benefits of utilizing sensors. Self-powered sensors have a built-in power source, so they would be immune to power interruptions. Not only would this “self-sufficiency” facilitate sensor deployment in traditionally hard-to-access areas of utility infrastructure, but it would also improve their reliability due to a lack of reliance on connectivity.
Obviously, the technology behind self-powered sensors is not quite ready for primetime, but I believe that it won’t take long to get there. It’s a relatively simple idea, it just needs to be perfected. And when it is, utilities in all sectors – gas, electric, and water – would be wise to consider ways to leverage the technology to improve overall system reliability and reduce outages.
