Patent ID: 7714735

Claim:
An apparatus for monitoring an electrical asset in an electrical infrastructure, the apparatus comprising: a sensor coupled to the electrical asset for obtaining data corresponding to at least one of a voltage, current, and phase angle waveforms; a globally synchronized timer for time-stamping the data with a globally synchronized time; a mesh network radio for communicating with at least one gateway and for relaying communications between one or more other electrical asset monitors and the at least one gateway; a processor for detecting one of a normal condition or an abnormal condition of the electrical asset based on the data; and a memory coupled to the processor for storing a plurality of fault type signatures; a power supply for extracting and storing energy from the electrical asset and supplying power to at least the sensor, the timer, and the radio, wherein the processor is configured to correlate the data to the plurality of fault type signatures to identify a fault type, and the mesh network radio is configured to transmit the fault type to the at least one gateway.