A smart energy meter – which has ac load management system, phase missing & phase reversal sensing, prepaid billing, Theft detection and online monitoring/controlling. All the data will be transmitted/received through a GSM module. The meter data flow between SEM, utility provider and customer. Energy usage information is received through current sensor. Moreover, Customer can get the status of his load, electricity unit consumption and load capacity at any instant of time from anywhere though SMS on sending request. The whole system is microcontroller based.
From previous practice till today, metering is done on multiple tariff. All end user can do is consume the electricity. Billing is done manually; hence create the chances of error. Manual utility billing cannot be stopped as for incident post-paid energy meters will be used. In this era of technology, in Pakistan, still laymen methods of meter data acquisition are used. An employ is hired who goes to every customer’s place and record meter reading in his notebook manually and then forward it to its designated office where it is manually logged into the systems that generates bills [1-3]. We can also use Power Line Communication (PLC) for receiving the meter readings but noise and interference makes it unsuitable. Meter reading can be transmitted/received by Zig-Bee, RF and Wi-Fi but they are of limited range and they are neither cost effective alternative. So, GSM communication system is more efficient than others.
Defects in conventional energy meters
There are many chances of error in manual billing. Majority are the human errors; after all we are human beings. The error can be made forcefully or by mistake. So whatever the circumstances, some of the common mistakes and errors are as follows:
- Billing problems occurs because of un-suitable monitoring system.
- By using mechanical objects, the revolution of meter is reduced.
- By using an immovable magnet, near the electromagnetic range the current in the coils was affect.
- By using the foreign phase ahead meter terminals.
- By swapping the power cables before the meter connector box.
- Doesn’t have a load management system, which is the main cause of load shedding in Pakistan.
- The method used for meter reading is very time consuming.
- There is no electricity theft detection.
- High labor and man power is required.
- No phase missing and phase reversal sensing.
- Majority of the consumers not get their bills detail on time or before due date.
In 2006, Mr. Vinu v das declared his innovation for Electricity Consumer’s Metering Code and a way to apply a technique to command meters for almost 26 lac electricity customers.
In 2009 Mr. Ashnak, Sudhish N george started to analyze the idea and discovered that there were major imperfections in suggestion to government the proposed system "is not appropriate”. Devices installed in Victoria have been initiated with countable smart performance parameters that is being boosted over a span of 30-minute spell data is vacant, far-flung cut-off and start-up reinforcement is available, and the Home Area Network will be accesible for households in 2010.
In November 2010 Mr. Litingcao, JingwanTian and Dahang was chosen out of state government. The incoming alliance stated that the meter program would be analyzed and the Auditor General's instruction carries out, specifically commenting on program governance, customer data shelter, and cost recovery. In January 2011, the Energy Minister. Michael O'Brien, said he was not commanding out a layoff of the program.
In December 2011 A. Arif Muhammad AI-Husain publish the specification of smart meter with smaller differences. The Indian Government after initially awkward the planned application of Time-of-Use tariffs for generic consumers has now allowed their introduction from mid-2011.
In 2012, the first Smart Meter. At the inception of 2012 there were three authorized Smart Meter In-Home Displays directly handy to users. Mr. S. Arun, Dr. Sidappa present a Three Phase Voltage Unbalance Factor (VUF) which are monitored and managed by the advance metering infrastructure(AMI) In December 2013 Mr.Bharat Kulkarni represented International Journal of Electrical and Electronics Research ISSN 2348-6988 (online) Vol. 4, Issue 2, pp: (10-13), Month: April - June 2016[8] The System Relies on a devoted Delay Tolerant Wireless Sensor Network(WSN) in which energy efficiency and reliability the design of the system.
In October 2014 Mr. Rahul Ganesh Sarangle present a general packet radio service modem (GPRS modem) and global positioning system module (GPS). The system reports real pollutant level. In December 2014 Mr. Tangsunantham and Mr. pirak presented a feasible solution of a wireless energy meter (WEM). Which is capable to deliver data via wireless Communication.
A smart energy meter is nomaly an electronic machine that notes the utilization of electric energy in gap of 10 minutes or fewer and broadcast that knowledge back to the service provider for audit and billing. It empowers the communication method known as half duplex for transmit data between the meter and the central system.
Dissimilar home energy monitors, smart meters can converge data for remote reporting [6]. Smart energy meters and normal energy meters are of same size but the smart energy meters are digital. SEM can measure readings in more detail than kilo watt hour so utility can expand the network and quality of power. Through SEM voltage and load current can be measured by voltage and current sensors respectively. So, there is no need to particularly enter the amount of voltages (V) and current (I) in order to control power factor in integrated circuits. Moreover, we are designing this system for detection of unlawful usage of electricity by calculating both PMTs and user’s energy consumption. For calculations micro controller is used and for display of reading at the consumer end will be displayed on LCD. The core advantages of SEM are as follows;
- Allows for faster outage disclosure and rehabilitation of service.
- Smart Meters are a first step towards building a Smart Grid.
- Raise privacy because electricity usage knowledge can be communicating automatically to the utility for billing function without on-site visits.
- However, those low income consumers may also benefit from different tariffs and prepaid billing.
Smart Energy Meter(SEM) has three basic parts:
- Phase reversal and phase missing detection
- Load management system
- Voltage and current sensing
In this project we simply composed the energy meter, which calculate the utilization of power units/hour. For calculating the units, we use current sensor, which gives the analog signal to our microcontroller. The micro controller senses the input voltages and after the computation on it they show the status on LCD screen and share it with the utility through a GSM module.
Like power units and status of load than voltage and also manage the load and the load management, monitoring utility software was designed on Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. In this project we also use mobile phone to send the SMS to get the status of our account or unit consumption remotely. Basically the whole project is microcontroller based and the utility software was design on MS C-Sharp(C#).
The microcontroller is Arduino ATMEGA328 which was programmed with Arduino IDE the language used was basic C to program our Arduino.
The units display on the main screen and the data is to be stored in MySQL Database which was also located on utility all the consumer data will be saved on utility software with date and time so if anyone can want to know the total consumption or previous data so they easily known that. Load management was performed by registration of load to any consumer or new consumer must have to gives their requirement of load so the utility is allowing them If they exceed the limit of power consumption or overload then the utility gives them warning through SMS to manage their load in between 5-10 minutes if they didn’t pay attention then the power was shut down or suspended for consumer and the consumer must have to contact the utility to resume their services again. Distinction of Smart Energy Meters is that relevant authorities disconnect and connect the supplies of electricity of any customer through SMS instead of sending an individual for that particular task [13]. It can be used in circumstances when the utility company needs to disengage the power facility because of non-payment of dues of bills or for any other issue. Another dominant aspect of Smart energy meter is consumer data was display on time interval, just because of monitoring if any error was occurring like phase missing, phase reversal, theft and error then the utility was shows the status legend on screen.
In Smart Meter we have two modes of transaction Pre-Paid and Post-Paid the postpaid mode is just like bill payment method at the end of the month the bill was dispatch to the consumer through SMS and they have to allow some time to pay with in it after that the surcharge will be applied.
If the user subscribes to the prepaid mode of operation so he has to pay the amount of minimum 100 units in advance and when 10 consumable units are remaining, so the consumer will receive a warning message to recharge your account. When the consumable units are finished so power supply will be suspended.
Theft-detection, was performed through the main line and consumer consumption if any mistake was found after summing the results then the theft was detected. Phase missing was detected through the comparator IC lM324 they detect and give the signal to controller.
Phase reversal was detected in between 3-phase supply because this was used line to line phase changing differences through the IC LM324. LCD Liquid crystal display this was used to display the basic parameters to the consumer. GSM modules were used to communicate between consumer and the utility.
The reading received through sums and reading displayed on the LCD is same. The phase reversal was checked by interchanging the phases before the meter and it worked. Whereas the phase missing was checked by removing one phase before the meter and the particular phase led started glowing and as the phase was connected again, so the led turned off. We put load of 100W so 0.5volts are send to the controller as signal and checked its performance. When 1kw load runs for 1hour so it consumes one unit. Hence, the SEM displayed accurate results.
This paper explains the functioning of Smart Energy Meter(SEM) and shows how they can be beneficial for consumers by managing their electricity bills and lowering the human needs for economical consumption of electricity. It provides accurate readings, phase missing and phase reversal protection as well as removes the possibility of dishonest/fraud activities.
As the world is moving towards renewable energy and majority people have started to produce their own energy though solar, wind and etc. So, Net-metering is introduced in western countries so if the excess power is produce to it will be send back to the grid. So, in future a smart energy meter should have net metering facility as well.
