ABSTRACT
The thesis outlines a project that aims to remotely monitor and control domestic energy meters. The project involves designing a circuit that continuously monitors the meter reading and sends a message to the electricity company. The specific objectives of the project include developing a smart billing system through an SMS alert system, creating an overload detection system, assessing the impact of smart meters on electricity management, and developing an alert system for detecting low meter balance. The study's significance is highlighted in the benefits it offers to consumers and electricity companies, including precise consumption information, clear and accurate billing, faster outage recovery, and better customer service. The project also provides advancements in theory and practice, including embedded C programming, PCB design, and LCD interfacing to the microcontroller. The scope of the project includes designing and constructing a smart meter equipped with a dedicated SIM, consisting of a Home Section and an Electrical Base Station. The proposed system monitors load and calculates the power consumed by the user, displaying the corresponding information on the LCD and communicating it to the controlling base station. The system also sends monthly bills and power theft alerts through an SMS. The project recommends that manufacturers ensure their devices meet safety and regulatory requirements, provide regular maintenance and updates, and incorporate features such as real-time monitoring and remote access. The successful design and construction of smart meters require a combination of hardware and software expertise, as well as an understanding of energy monitoring systems.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
With the rapid developments in the Wireless communication technology by the use of microcontrollers, there are many improvements in automating various industrial aspects for reducing manual efforts. The traditional manual meter reading was not suitable for longer operating purposes as it spends much human and material resource. It brings additional problems in calculation of readings and billing manually. Now-a-days the number of electricity consumers is increasing in great extent .It became a hard task in handling and maintaining the power as per the growing requirements. Presently maintenance of the power is also an important task as the human operator goes to the consumer’s house and produces the bill as per the meter reading. If the consumer is not available, the billing process will be pending and human operator again needs to revisit. Going to each and every consumer’s house and generating the bill is a laborious task and requires lot of time. It becomes very difficult especially in rainy season. If any consumer did not pay the bill, the operator needs to go to their houses to disconnect the power supply. These processes are time consuming and difficult to handle. Moreover, the manual operator cannot find the unauthorized connections or malpractices carried out by the consumer to reduce or stop the meter reading/power supply.
The human error can open an opportunity for corruption done by the human meter reader. So the problem which arises in the billing system can become inaccurate and inefficient [1]
Ontheotherhandconsumersarealsonotsatisfiedwiththeservicesofpowercompanies, most of the time they have complaints regarding statistical errors in their monthlybills.
Thus this project presents an innovation towards the minimization of technical errorsand reduction in human dependency at the same time. With the help of this project the monthly energy consumption of a consumer will be received from a remote location directly. In this way human effort needed to record the meter readings which are till now recorded byvisiting every home individually is reduced. This results in considerable loss of human hours and also provides considerable details regarding the average consumption of a locality so that power supply can be made according to these data. This will help the officials in deciding the specifications of transformers and other instruments required in power transmission and distribution.
This idea is economically efficient as well because the meter reading can be gotten at a very low cost. The implementation is done in such a way that a SMS is delivered to the GSM MODEM whose reading is to be noted and then that meter replies to the server in the SMS format and it is known that SMS costs are very low.
The GSM AMR takes the advantage of available GSM infrastructure nationwide coverage and the Short Messaging System (SMS) cell broadcasting feature to request and retrieve individual houses and building power consumption reading back to the energy provider wirelessly.
1.2 Statement of the problem
In Conventional metering system to measure electricity consumption the energyprovider companyhirepersonstovisiteachhouseandrecordmeterreadingmanuallywhichisusedfor billing, the bill then sent to consumer by post or hand delivery, this is not only sluggish but laborious, with the company having no control over these meters. There is a stark amount of revenue loss being incurred by our country due to energy theft which is a serious problem, people try to manipulate meter reading by adopting various corrupt practices such as current reversal,partialearthfaultcondition,bypassmeter,magneticinterferenceetc.[2].Withtheaid of this project a definite solution is proffered which allows power companies to have total controloverenergymetersandhaverealtimeinformationofsamefromaremotelocationwith little human effort and at reduced cost as compared to conventionalmethods
1.3 Aims And Objective
The purpose of this project is the remote monitoring and control of the domestic energy meter;itsaimsincludes:todesignacircuitwhichcontinuouslymonitorsthemeterreadingand sendsmessagetoelectricitycompany,programmingoftheGSMMODEMwithAT(Attention) commandsequence,interfacingtheprogrammablechipwiththepersonalcomputer,interfacing the programmable chip with the energy meter, interfacing of GSM MODEM with the programmable chip, sending messages from the remote phone to controldevice.
The specific objectives are;
- To automate a smart billing system for electricity consumption through SMS alert system
- To develop a system that is capable of overloading detection and sending of reports
- To assess the impact of the smart meter method on electricity management by consumers.
To develop an alert system for detecting meter balance on low level
1.4 Significance of the study
The significance of these project benefits the Consumers of electric service and the electric services company as it provides precise consumption information, clear and accurate billing, automatic outage information and faster recovery, better and faster customer service, smart automated processes instead of manual work, accurate information from the network load to optimise maintenance and investments, detection of tampering of meters, demand and distribution management, better company credibility, consumer meter reading which eliminates cost and inadequacies of manual reading, observation and control of energy consumption and production, this is useful for planning and power allocation purposes.
The project provides learning’s on the following advancements in terms of theory practice: GSM modem interfacing to Microcontroller, PC interfacing with GSM modem, energy meter interfacing to Microcontroller, embedded C programming, PCB (printed circuit board) design, LCD interfacing to Microcontroller.
1.5 Scope of the study
The scope of this project is to Design And Construction Of A Smart Meter. Within the scope of this project, the prototype model is equipped with a dedicated SIM (Subscriber Identification Module).
