A retrot current sensor for non-intrusive power monitoring at the circuit breaker

This thesis presents a new sensor for power monitoring that measures current flow in a circuit breaker without permanent modification of the breaker panel or the circuit breaker itself. At the breaker panel, an inductive pickup and low-power amplifier sense current from the breaker face. Two coupled resonators form an inductive link that serves as a communication channel through the steel breaker panel door. A passive, balanced JFET mixer circuit transmits the sensed current signal through the inductive link by impedance modulation. Outside of the breaker panel door, sense circuitry detects the impedance modulation, and a digitally implemented compensator inverts the non-uniform frequency response of the analog sensor circuitry to reconstruct the original current signal. This sensor provides a solution for low-cost, non-intrusive retrofit of any circuit breaker panel for centralized power monitoring.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Vickery, Daniel Robert

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Steven B. Leeb and John J. Cooley.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76823

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/76823