Method for remotely monitoring failed surge arrester disconnectors and energy harvester for autonomous power supply of monitoring devices installed on surge arresters

A method of remotely monitoring a status of a surge arrester disconnector, comprising:

• providing a long-range wireless mesh communication system including a plurality of surge arrester disconnectors organized in a plurality of clusters, each cluster includes a plurality of surge arrester disconnectors that are physically located within a same cluster area, at least one of the surge arrester disconnectors in each cluster is coupled to a communication device of a predetermined communication range for transmitting a signal indicative of a disconnector status;
• transmitting, from a first cluster of the plurality of clusters, a status signal indicative of a status of a first surge arrester disconnector in the first cluster to a second cluster located within the predetermined communication range from the first cluster;
• consecutively transmitting the status signal from the second cluster that receives the status signal to a third cluster within the predetermined communication range, until reaching an end cluster on the long-range mesh communication system;
• transmitting, from the end cluster, the status signal to a monitoring station;
• monitoring the status of the first surge arrester disconnector at the monitoring station based on a result of transmission of the status signal, at least one of the plurality of clusters includes a surge arrester disconnector coupled to the communication device and configured to act as a cluster head, the cluster head receiving a plurality of status signals from the plurality of surge arrester disconnectors included in the same cluster and transmitting the status signals to an adjacent cluster within the predetermined communication range;
• and
• for each of the plurality of clusters, randomly selecting a surge arrester disconnector from the plurality of surge arrester disconnectors coupled to the communication device that are included in the same cluster for acting as the cluster head.