On account of periodic characteristics of the services of power line status surveillance and the requirement of long-time working outdoors for communication devices， a low power communication technology and an implementation method based on the mechanism of sleep and awakening for power line status surveillance system are proposed. All communication devices on the lines without data transmission are in sleep status and they can be awaked timely before demand of data transmission and to finish it. Performance analysis shows that the proposed technology can significantly reduce the power consumption. Communication devices with this technology are able to operate steadily even the batteries are not charged for a few weeks.