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Remote Monitoring System for Electricity Energy Meters

Final Year Project Proposal

Remote Monitoring System for Electricity Energy Meters

Group Members: M.Burhan Hassan M.Shahab-ur-Raheem Khan M.Usman Kamil Waseem Zia FA09-BCE-030 FA09-BCE-052 FA09-BCE-035 FA09-BCE-050

Research Supervisor: Mr. Muhammad Babar Ali

COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Electrical Engineering Department M.A.Jinnah Campus Lahore.

Remote Monitoring System for Electricity Energy Meters

Abstract:
An Electricity meter or energy meter is a device that measures the amount of electric energy consumed by a residence, business or an electrically powered device. In Pakistan, the power distribution companies are still using conventional methods for billing by sending a man to note down energy consumed by customers. He read the units consumed shown on energy meter. Errors get introduced at every stage of energy billing like errors with electro-mechanical meters, human errors while noting down the meter reading, errors while processing the paid bills and the due bills. The proposed system overcome all the above flaws of this existing system which automatically reads the energy consumed by the user and sends it to the power distributor by using the existing Global Standard for Mobile Communication (GSM) short messaging service (SMS).

Introduction:
As we know the energy meter which is placed in our home or office calculates the energy consumed by the user. At the end of every month the person usually called a Meter reader from power distributor has to visit the place where the meter is placed to get the reading and either note it down or takes an image of energy meter for further data processing (i.e. for generating the bill). The proposed system automatically reads the energy meter data and sends it to the power distributor. It uses a GSM modem for this purpose. The system can also provide the facility to disconnect the supply of a customer in case of any payment related issue. This proposed system can also provide pre-paid billing system for users.

Literature Review:
In [1], development of GSM Automatic Power Meter Reading (GAPMR) system was presented. In this system electricity meter reading was send to central system using GSM to provide effective billing calculation. In [2], implementation methodology for a wireless automatic meter reading system (WAMRS) incorporating the widely used GSM and Zigbee network is presented. Using GSM as the medium for WAMRS provides a cost-effective, wireless, always-connected, two-way data link between utility company and WAMRS, the WAMRS sends information of utility usage, power quality and outage alarm to utility company, tampering detection to the utility servers.

Remote Monitoring System for Electricity Energy Meters

According to [3] their proposed system will keep track of the meter reading of each day and the reading with the user identification number send it to the user as well as to the electricity department. Electricity E-Billing system associated with electricity department will keep the track of each SMS meter reading and the appropriate bill get generated at the last day of the month and the bill is forwarded to user from the server. So there is no chance of confusion to the user for paying the bill. The GSM based Power Monitoring and Controlled System (GPMC) also feature distribution control system which controls the power of the appliances remotely. In our project, we will introduce a customer premises node (CPN) which reads electricity meter reading and pass this to centre node (CN) through wired medium, which forward this data to distributor premises node (DPN) using GSM. Power distributor can also any time disconnect the supply of electricity to user.

Project Objectives and Scope

Designing a circuit which continuously monitors the energy meter reading which sends the periodic messages to power distributor. Designing application software to provide graphical user interface for an administrator at power distributor. Providing remotely monitoring of energy meter e.g. disconnect power supply of a customer in case of any payment related issues. Introducing a pre-paid billing system. Providing SMS alerts for the user e.g. alerts about units consumed, due date, recharging etc. We can extend our work to implement the interface between customer premises node (CPN) and Centre node (CN) using Rf Transmitters/Receivers (Subjected to the availability of time).

Proposed Work:
To deign Automatic Meter Reading System using GSM, the proposed layout of the system is shown in fig 1. Our proposed system mainly consists of three nodes: Customer Premises Node (CPN) Centre Node (CN) Distributor Premises Node (DPN)

The Customer Premises node consists of a micro-controller attached to digital electric meter. The electricity supply connected to energy meter passes through relay which is controlled by micro-controller. The micro-controller counts the units consumed by electricity meter and pass this to Centre node trough wired medium as shown in fig 2.

Remote Monitoring System for Electricity Energy Meters

At the centre node, we have microcontroller and GSM modem interface with each other to collect data from CPN as shown in fig 3. The centre node passes reading of energy meter to distributor premises node (DPN) using GSM .DPN is shown in fig 4.The power distributor can now inform the customer regarding the current bill or status using the customers registered phone number by a message. Proposed system can also offer pre-paid billing system for the users. Pre-paid billing will be done just like telecommunication companies e.g. Warid. The user will have to text the meter id. And card number to the power distributor, who in return, will update his/her credit on their record. The system is designed around a microcontroller. The code is written using standard C programming used for programming the microcontroller. The digital energy meter is interfaced with micro-controller to read units consumed.

(CPN 1) Relay Dig. Meter 1 Relay

(CPN 2) Dig. Meter 2

Micro-controller

Micro-controller Micro-controller Micro-Controller (CN) GSM Modem

GSM

GSM Modem (DPN) Computer

Fig 1: Complete Overview of proposed system.

Remote Monitoring System for Electricity Energy Meters

Power Supply

Relay

Digital energy Meter User End

Micro-controller

Fig 2: Customer Premises Node (CPN)

Controller

GSM Modem

Fig 3: Center Node (CN) to collect data from outer units

Central System with application software

GSM Modem

Fig 4: Distributor Premises Node (DPN)

Remote Monitoring System for Electricity Energy Meters

Project Advantages:
Precise energy consumption information Clear and accurate billing Better and faster customer service SMS alerts for customers

Timeline:
Task/Month
Literature Review Digital meter Interfacing with c Study of GSM Modem Software development Design analysis Hardware Implementation Test Thesis

Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. April. May.

Conclusion:
With this system the power distributors can collect units consumed remotely. They can cut of the supply to defaulter customers. The data collection and manipulation tasks become faster and easier. Any modification can be made in our proposed system to accommodate users requests and facilities with less time. Changes in rate or unit calculation can be done very effectively.

References
[1]. Automatic Power Meter Reading System using GSM Network H.G.Rodney Tan, IEEE, C.H. Lee and V.H. Mok, IEEE

Remote Monitoring System for Electricity Energy Meters

[2]. Design and Implementation of Automatic Meter Reading System Using GSM, ZIGBEE through GPRS International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering. Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2012 [3]. Gsm Based Power Meter Reading And Control System Mr.Rahul Ganesh Sarangle, Prof.Dr.UdayPanditKhot ,Prof. JayenModi / International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com Vol. 2, Issue 4, June-July 2012, pp.664-671