2018 4th International Conference for Convergence in Technology (I2CT)
SDMIT Ujire, Mangalore, India. Oct 27-28, 2018
Development of Electrical Fence Energizet for a Farm
Fencing System
Aditya S Vyas
The National Institute of Engineering, The National Institute of Engineering,
Manandavadi Road, Mysuru – 570 008 Manandavadi Road, Mysuru – 570 008
adityasy10@gmail.com
Abstract— There has always been a conflict between animal
life and agricultural produce at the boundaries of farms and
other agricultural sites which are situated in proximity to wild
life habitat. Wild animal infiltration into agricultural sites may
result in loss of agricultural assets while the preventive measures
taken against animal infiltration can endanger wild animal lives.
This paper proposes an electrical fence energizer scheme, whose
motive is to resolve the above-mentioned conflict with the help of
a balanced focus on its safety and effectiveness while being
economical to implement.
Keywords—Fencing Systems, Fence Energizer, Induction coil.
I. INTRODUCTION
An electric fencing system is a system designed to prevent
subjects (animals or humans) from escaping out or intruding
into a specified boundary by the means of an electrical shock.
In a conventional electrical fencing system, the fence is
charged to a suitable high voltage by the fence energizer.
Whenever a subject tries to cross the fence, it encounters the
fence wires which being at a high voltage drives an electrical
current through the body [1]. Depending on the magnitude of
electrical current through body, there can be various effects
from tickles to death. The magnitude of current through body
however depends on fence voltage and the body resistances
[2]. For the normal body resistances the fence voltage is so
adjusted that the current through the body will cause the
subject to momentarily lose control over its body and move
away from the fence, thus effectively deterring the subject
away from the fence boundary without harming it. The high
voltage is applied in the form of short duration pulses, which
ensures that the subject has enough time to safely move away
from the fence, without being subjected to continuous electric
current, which can cause death in a small duration, hence
ensuring safety.
Fig. 1. Conventional Energizer scheme
978-1-5386-5232-9/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
R. Radha. Bharath Y.K.
The National Institute of Engineering,
Manandavadi Road, Mysuru – 570 008
A conventional fence energizer as shown in Fig. 1 involves
a single high-tension transformer, which is driven by a
switching circuit in turn controlled by a controller, which also
monitors the transformer output with the help of a feedback
circuit. The power source can be DC source like battery or
solar panel, or a single-phase AC main. The conventional
fences generate a high voltage of 10kV or above at a low
frequency of around 0.75~2 Hz. Thus in conventional fences a
high voltage is always present in the intervals of 0.5~1.5
seconds. When an animal comes in contact with the fence, it
gets hit with the pulsating high voltage and moves away.
However, if the animal is stuck then it will be hit with multiple
pulses for prolonged durations, which may kill the animal.
Further, there are several reports and incidences [3], [4], and
[5], which suggest that the available fences are not safe for
animals and have caused many casualties over the years at the
fence boundaries. Illegal fence energizing, unsafe fences which
don't detect if animals get stuck or have persistent presence are
the prime reasons for many animal casualties. The available
energizers are expensive and not viable for farmers and other
landowners nearby forests hence forcing them to illegally
energize the fence from mains supply, which can be fatal for
animals.
Hence in the conventional fences there is a tradeoff
between effectiveness, safety and cost, which ultimately threats
the life of animal.
The energizer proposed addresses this issue by having a
balanced focus on safety and effectiveness, while having an
economical cost. The energizer has several superior features,
which allow it to maintain safety, and effectiveness together.
The designed fence energizer has a completely different
behavior when compared to conventional fences. Under normal
conditions with no subject present on the fence, the fence
behaves as a dead fence, with no high voltage on the fence
power wires. Only when a subject comes in contact with the
fence, a sensing mechanism triggers the system and a high
voltage is generated and then applied on to the fence wires. But
the applied high voltage is only for a short duration, after
which the system will withdraw high voltage from the fence
and try to detect any presence; if the subject is still present then
again a high voltage is applied. This cycle repeats for a few
times, after which the system understands that the subject is
persistent and then the fence is shut down, with alarm
activation and a notification to the owner through SMS.
Further, the designed fence also can operate independently on
each zone of the boundary, where any interruption in a
particular zone will not interfere in the operation of the other
zones.
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 Fig. 2. Fence energizer block diagram
II. METHODOLOGY
The block diagram in the Fig. 2 shows basic layout of
various elements of the energizer like the presence detection
unit, induction coils, coil driver unit, relay unit, batteries, GSM
unit and the charging unit along with their interconnections.
The energizer developed is a 4 zone independent energizer,
hence has four independent induction coils for producing high
voltage pulses in each zone when a subject presence is detected
in the corresponding zones. The energizer has nine outgoing
wires four detection wires M1, M2, M3, M4, four power wires
P1, P2, P3, P4 corresponding to each of the zones and a
common ground wire. The energizer has two batteries B1 and
B2 as power sources, where B1 is the main battery powering
the induction coils and the detection unit, while B2 supplies the
power to the controller unit such that the grounds of both
batteries remain isolated and the controller has independent
supply. The layout of the system is as shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Site implementation of fencing system
In order to incorporate the complex behavior of the
designed fence energizer, the site implementation of the fence
around the boundary and on the fence poles requires special
modifications. Firstly, the fences on each side of the boundary
are independent zones; they have different power and detection
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wires, while they all share a common ground. Secondly, unlike
conventional fences having only hot wires on the fence poles,
the designed system has multiple wires having different
functions arranged on the fence poles. The fence poles
incorporate Lighting wire-L, Barbed wire-B, Detection wires-
M, power wires + and ground wires - .
A. Induction coil and Coil driver
To develop a high voltage strong enough to penetrate thick
skin of animals so that a sufficient amount of current is made
to flow through their body, an induction coil is used. The
induction coil internally consists of two coils, a low voltage
high current coil of few turns( up to 50 turns) which develops
high amounts of magnetic flux 'ϕ' and a high voltage low
current coil of a few thousands of turns (1000~5000 turns),
which are coupled magnetically on a high permittivity
laminated core and have a common ground. To the low voltage
coil a switched DC (chopped) is applied from the main battery
B1 under PWM scheme with the help of Coil driver circuit.
The switching action causes the flux developed by the primary
to change rapidly, inducing EMF in both the coils.
The EMF induced in a coil having 'n' turns is given by the
following equation
(1)
From (1) it is seen that the high voltage coil which has
large number of turns will have a higher voltage induced in it,
which is of the order of 15~20KV.The high voltage developed
is in pulsating fashion reflecting the switched DC applied to
the low voltage coil. Hence, the high voltage appears as pulses
of short duration and delivers only a low and safe current
enough to deter away the subject on the fence.
There are four such coils employed which are independent
to operate in each zone but are energized through a common
coil driver circuit which is controlled by the controller unit as
per the program sequence. Further, the supply to the coils is
made available from the main battery through relays, which are
also controlled by controller unit to switch coils when required.
The coil driver circuit has a very simple operation of
switching the primary coil ON and OFF corresponding to the
PWM signal provided by the controller unit. In order to
facilitate this operation the circuit involves an n-channel
enhancement type power MOSFET IRF-540, a MOSFET gate
driver IC TLP-250 that provides optical isolation for the
signals from the controller unit and correspondingly provides
higher amplitude signals to MOSFET gate with the help of
source 'Vgate', which has an independent ground 'GND-0'.
Further elements like resistors in the gate driver circuit ensure
that currents do not exceed limits and proper gate voltages are
maintained, a gate driver circuit is hence formed [6]. A
capacitor of 0.1μF is provided to act as turn OFF snubber,
which absorbs coil energy during turn OFF and hence saves the
MOSFET from high voltage spikes by the coil during turn
OFF. An induction coil in conjunction with coil driver circuit is
as shown in Fig. 4.
Fig. 5. Presence detection unit

The power supply to this unit is given through relay R5 NC

Fig. 4. Induction coil and coil driver
When the MOSFET is turned ON, current from the battery
flows through the primary of the induction coil and reaches a
steady state value in a short duration depending on coil
inductance, this sets up a magnetic field 'ϕ', in the primary coil,
which links the secondary coil. When the MOSFET is turned
OFF, the current through the primary coil becomes zero;
causing the magnetic field instantly collapses, and due to very
fast rate of change of magnetic field, an EMF is induced in
both the coils. Since the secondary coil has very large number
of turns, the EMF induced for this drastic collapse of the field
in the secondary coil is very large (up to 20KV )but for a short
duration. Thus, the coil develops high voltage spikes. This
operation cycle of the coil is repeated for 100 times every
second, hence a period of 10ms. The PWM signal is so
programmed to have an ON time of 6ms and OFF time of 4ms,
hence operates at a duty cycle of 60%.
The coil driver circuit consists of a MOSFET gate driver IC
TLP 250 which is an optocoupler IC providing isolation to the
PWM signals from the controller unit. An additional supply
'Vgate' is provided to drive the MOSFET. When PWM signal
is high, the gate driver IC connects the gate of the MOSFET to
the power source 'Vgate', switching ON the MOSFET and
when PWM signal is low the MOSFET gate is grounded to
'GND-0' through the IC so that it switches OFF, hence
providing optimum conditions for MOSFET operation.
B. Presence detection unit
The presence detection unit circuit is shown in the Fig 5.
The presence detection unit consists of two main integrated
circuits- LM339N and PC817. Resistor R is 2.2KΩ and is
used as current limiting resistor for the input of PC817,
resistors R1 and R2 are bridge network resistors, which have
the values of 1MΩ and 10MΩ respectively.
(Normally Closed) contact. Hence, in standby condition the
presence detection unit remains energized while its shut down
under fence operation.
LM339N is a quad comparator IC, which internally
employs four operational amplifiers. The inverting and non-
inverting terminals of the op-amps are connected to a bridge
network, whose one arm is open circuit. The subject coming in
contact between the detection wire and ground acting as a
resistor will now be in place of the open circuited arm, this will
change the voltage at the inverting terminal and hence the
output of the op-amp. The output of each op-amp is used to
drive optocoupler IC PC817. This after providing isolation
transfers the output to the controller unit.
Fig. 6. Single zone PDU circuit
Fig.6 shows the single zone connection of Presence
Detection Unit. In the standby mode, the inverting terminal is
lifted from the ground and is connected to the supply through
the resistor R2. Thus, the voltage at the inverting terminal 'V-'
is equal to supply voltage i.e. 12V. The non-inverting terminal
connected to the supply through the voltage divider formed by
the two R1 resistors. Thus the voltage at the non-inverting 'V+'
is half the supply voltage i.e. 6V. Since V+ < V-, the output of
the comparator is low, i.e. output terminal is connected to
ground and the internal LED of the PC817 is turned ON. This
drives the PC817 and on the output side of PC817 there is
conduction from its collector to emitter, which hence grounds
the controller sense wires and controller senses it as input
LOW, thus under this condition the system remains
inoperative.
Whenever there is presence of any subject on the fence in a
particular zone, the subject connects itself between inverting
terminal and ground. As the skin resistance is usually much

3
below 10MΩ [2], the voltage at inverting terminal 'V-' remains
below 6V under the presence of any subject on the fence, while
the non-inverting terminal is always at 6V. Since under this
condition V+ > V-, the comparator output becomes high,
which results in turn OFF of internal LED, which results in
disconnection of sense wire of the controller from ground and
the controller reads it as input high. Thus triggering the system
and activating the induction coil of that particular zone.
C. Relay unit
Fig. 7. Relay unit connections
The relay unit employed is an 8-channel relay module as
shown in Fig. 7, which can be operated directly by the
controller unit under low logic at an operating potential of 5
Volts. Further the relay coils are isolated from the controller
unit via internally embedded Optocouplers present in the relay
module.
Of the 8 relays present ( R1, R2,........R8), the first four
relays (R1,R2,R3,R4) are for operating induction coils of the
four zones (Z1,Z2,Z3,Z4). These relays avail the switched
power from the coil driver unit to the induction coil of the
corresponding zone. Further to these relays, indicators I1, I2, I3
and I4 are connected; hence whenever a particular zone
induction coil is energized corresponding zone indicator will
turn ON.
The fifth relay is (R5) is operated to establish power supply
to either presence detection unit or to induction coils but not
both at the same time. Under normal state with no subject
present on the fence the relay R5 is in its normally closed state
where the power from the battery flows to the presence
detection unit, for detection purpose. Whenever a subject is
detected by the presence detection unit, the controller unit
simultaneously operates relays R5 and a corresponding zone
relay (R1~R4).
R5 also operates I5 indicator, which is an alarm. Thus as
soon as there is an interruption on any zone alarm is activated.
The sixth relay R6 connects the battery to the relay R5
through the NC contact. Under normal condition the relay
remains inoperative, establishing power supply to entire
system. Only if the subject is persistent on the fence the
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controller operates the relay R6 which shuts down the whole
system, only the controller, relay unit, GSM module remain
powered through the second power supply B2. The relay R6
also operates the LED indicator I6, which indicates that the
fence is shutdown due to interruption.
D. Controller unit
Fig. 8. Controller unit connections
The controller unit consists of ' ATMEL AT mega 328' as
the microcontroller which is embedded along with its
auxiliaries to form an embedded system called the ARDUINO
UNO, which is shown along with its connections in the system
in Fig. 8.
The controller unit operates with a clock speed of 16MHz,
it has 6 are analog pins and 14digital bidirectional pins of
which 6 are capable of PWM. The unit has a total flash
memory of 32KB and a SRAM of 2KB.The controller can be
directly programmed from the Integrated Development
Environment (IDE) application from a personal computer.
The controller unit is configured such that digital pins 2,3,4
and 5 act as input pins which sense change from the presence
detection unit for each of the four zones and digital pins
12,11,10 and 9 act as output pins which drive zonal relays
R1,R2,R3 and R4 respectively. The power establishing relay
R5 is driven by the digital pin 7 and R6 is driven by pin 6. The
digital pin 13 acts as the PWM pin, which drives the coil driver
unit via MOSFET driver TLP250.
The controller is so programmed to run in a loop such that
it individually checks the status of each digital input pin by if-
else conditions one after the other and if there is a change in
any of the input digital pins, the program awaits for a certain
duration to ensure that the subject is persistent on the fence and
then jumps to a subroutine which activates a relay
corresponding to the detected zone along with R5 and then a
PWM signal is generated on pin 13, thus high voltage is now
available on the detected zone for a fixed interval of time, after
which the program returns to the main loop and again starts to
check each of the digital input pins and continues to repeat.
Any change in other zones is updated in consecutive iterations
of the program, thus simultaneous and independent operation
of different zones is possible.
 The complete hardware setup of the system proposed is as
shown in Fig. 9.
Fig. 9. Hardware setup of the system
III. EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS
In order to determine the peak output voltage of the
induction coils, which will be directly applied on to the
subject encountering the fence, an experimental setup is
created with two parallel electrodes as shown in the Fig 10
and Fig. 11.
Fig. 10 Scheme for measuring peak output voltage
The above experimental setup is spark gap method with
uniform field electrode gap [7].
The set up consists of an isolated chamber with two flat
parallel electrodes, a fixed electrode connected to HV terminal
of the coil under test and a moving electrode connected to
ground. The electric field between the electrodes is spread
uniformly throughout the gap. The gap between the electrodes
is measured over a graduated scale. When the coil is energized
and the distance between the electrodes is gradually reduced,
on observation we can find a point at which the gap will have
its first spark over. This point is the point at which the air in the
chamber breaks down and there will be an arcing. This gap
between the electrodes is recorded as the spark gap 'S' and is
used in calculating the peak output voltage of the coil.
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Fig. 11 Physical implementation of experimental setup.
During the conduction of the experiment, the following the
atmospheric conditions were recorded which are considered for
the calculation of the peak coil output voltage.
 Temperature (T): 28°C.
 Atmospheric pressure (P): 759.43torr.
 Vapour pressure of water (e): 28.349mmHg. (@ 28°C)
The air density factor is given by (2)
Therefore, d=0.9727
Experimentally, the spark gap (S) is found to be,
S= 6 mm.
The peak voltage (Vp) is given by (3)
The peak voltage hence obtained is
Considering accuracy to be within ± 10%, the peak output
voltage varies between 18 to 21 kV
The simulation graph of induction coils showing coil output
voltage, primary current and the PWM signal with respect to
time [8], is as shown in Fig 12.
The simultaneous variation of the PWM signal, Primary
coil current and the secondary coil output voltage with respect
to the time can be observed from the graph. As soon as the
signal turns high the MOSFET turns ON and the primary coil
current rises gradually due to the inductance of the coil and
reaches a steady state value and hence maximum possible
magnetic field ϕ is established. As soon as the PWM signal
turns low, the MOSFET turns OFF and the current in the
primary coil seizes to flow. This results in a rapid collapse of
the magnetic field, which induces a high voltage spike in the
secondary coil with a peak ranging from 15 to 20 kV. The high
voltage spike generated has a very sharp peak with extremely
high rate of rise of voltage. This peak exists only for a few 100
microseconds.

Fig. 12 Coil output voltage, Input current and PWM signal versus time
There exists a choice of controlling the energy in the output
voltage spike. The energy in the voltage spike is proportional
to the energy in the magnetic field setup by the primary coil.
The energy can be controlled by controlling the duty cycle of
the PWM signal. If the duty cycle is such that the current is not
allowed to reach the steady state value, then the energy is
reduced in the output of the coil. Thus if the ON time of the
PWM signal is less than the time constant then coil energy can
be reduced, hence at lower duty cycles the energy in the output
is controllable. The variation of primary coil current and
energy versus time constant of the coil [9], is as shown in Fig
13.
Fig. 13. Primary coil current and energy versus time.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper explains the drawbacks of conventional fence
energizer where there is a compromise between safety,
effectiveness and the overall cost. Conventional fences which
are effective and safe, are not economical hence are less
employed, while the ones economical are not safe staking the
life of animals. This scenario of fences in the market forces the
farmers and landowners nearby the forest reserves to employ
illegal energization of fences causing animal causalities.
The fencing system developed overcomes these drawbacks
of safety and effectiveness at an economical cost. The system
employs highly effective induction coils with a program
sequence that ensures the safety of the animal when stuck in
fence by monitoring the persistent presence of the animal on
the fence. Further features like zonal security, dead fence on
standby, GSM based notification service and independent
power supply are provided, which are absent in most of the
conventional fences while having a cost much more
economical to the conventional fences available in the market.
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