Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

@article{210130,
        author = {Nandini Ramappa Patil and Mahamad Suheel M and Pavithra S S and Prof. Pushpa Y},
        title = {Cost-Effective Detection of Low Voltage AC Overhead Conductor Breakage},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {6},
        pages = {1-8},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=210130},
        abstract = {Overhead conductors carry electricity to homes, farms and industries, but they are exposed to weather, ageing and mechanical stress, and a breakage can leave a live conductor on the ground or cut off the supply to consumers. Conventional protection often fails to detect a fallen conductor because its fault current is small, and detection by manual patrolling is slow. This project presents the design and development of a low-cost embedded system for detecting overhead conductor breakage and abnormal voltage on a low-voltage AC line, with automatic load isolation and instant WhatsApp fault notification. The system is built around the ESP32 microcontroller. A ZMPT101B voltage sensor and an ACS712 current sensor measure the AC voltage and the load current of the monitored line. The ESP32 samples the signals, computes their RMS values and compares the voltage with a configured safe window of 180 V to 260 V. When the voltage leaves the window, as happens when the supply collapses after a conductor breakage or rises abnormally because of a surge or neutral fault, the ESP32 opens a relay to isolate the load, turns the green LED off, turns the red LED and buzzer on, displays the fault, and sends an alert through its built-in WIFI to a cloud service that delivers it as a WhatsApp message. The WhatsApp message gives the fault name, the measured voltage and current, the relay state, the configured limit and the location reference, so that the maintenance person can judge the situation without visiting the site. The prototype was tested for low-voltage and high-voltage conditions. The captured alerts report a low-voltage fault at 7.0 V with 0.00 A and a high-voltage fault at 274.1 V with 0.00 A, with the relay OFF in both cases, against the configured limit of 180 V – 260 V. The project combines sensing, embedded control, power switching and cloud communication in a compact unit made from commonly available modules. It offers a cost-effective means of improving public safety and speeding up fault response on low-voltage distribution lines, and it can be extended with multi-node monitoring, power backup, current sensing and three-phase support.},
        keywords = {Downed Conductor, High-Impedance Fault, IoT, ESP32, Edge, Current Sensing, Voltage Sensing, Power Isolation},
        month = {November},
        }