Automatic Meter Reading.pdf

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GSM Based Automatic Energy Meter ReadingSystem with Instant Billing

Ashna.k PG Scholar, Electronics & CommunicationDept.

National Institute of Technology,Calicut, India,673601

E-mail:[email protected].

Sudhish N GeorgeAssistant Professor, Electronics & Communication Dept.

National Institute of Technology,Calicut, India,673601

E-mail: sudhish @nitc.ac.in

Abstract — The technology of e-metering (Electronic

Metering) has gone through rapid technological advancements

and there is increased demand for a reliable and efficient

Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) system. This paper presents

the design of a simple low cost wireless GSM energy meter and its

associated web interface, for automating billing and managing

the collected data globally. The proposed system replaces

traditional meter reading methods and enables remote access ofexisting energy meter by the energy provider. Also they can

monitor the meter readings regularly without the person visiting

each house. A GSM based wireless communication module is

integrated with electronic energy meter of each entity to have

remote access over the usage of electricity. A PC with a GSM

receiver at the other end, which contains the database acts as the

billing point. Live meter reading from the GSM enabled energy

meter is sent back to this billing point periodically and these

details are updated in a central database. A new interactive, user

friendly graphical user interface is developed using Microsoft

visual studio .NET framework and C#. With proper

authentication, users can access the developed web page details

from anywhere in the world. The complete monthly usage and

due bill is messaged back to the customer after processing thesedata.

Keywords—Automatic Meter Reading System (AMRS); GSM;

PIC; Short Messaging System (SMS); Visual Studio .NET; C#.

I. I NTRODUCTION

Electrical power has become indispensable to humansurvival and progress. Apart from efforts to meet growingdemand, automation in the energy distribution is also necessaryto enhance people’s life standard. Traditional meter reading byhuman operator is inefficient to meet the future residentialdevelopment needs. So there is increased demand for

Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) systems which collectsmeter readings electronically, and its application is expandingover industrial, commercial and utility environment.

Electronic utility meters are an important step towardsautomating the utility metering process. Automated utilitymeters have many new features that help to reduce the cost ofutilities to customers and the cost of delivering utilities to theutility provider. The onset of rural electrification providesopportunities for new and more efficient metering technologiesto be implemented. Traditional electro-mechanical meters, stillwidely used today, are prone to drift over temperature and time

This project was supported and financed by National Institute of Technology,

Calicut, INDIA, 673601.

as a result of the analogue and mechanical nature of thecomponents in these meters. Collection of meter readings isalso inefficient, because a meter reader has to physically be on-site to take the readings. This method of collecting of meterreadings becomes more problematic and costly when readingshave to be collected from vast, and often scattered rural areas.

Meter readers are reluctant to make the effort to travel to suchareas and will often submit inaccurate estimations of theamount of electricity consumed. For households at the top ofhigh buildings and luxury housing plots, traditional meterreading is highly inefficient. There exists chance for missing bills, absence of consumer etc. Even though these conventionalmeters were replaced with more efficient electronic energymeters these problems still persists. So a system which will provide the bill in users mobile will be more suitable in thecurrent scenario. Here a new method of post paid electronicenergy metering is introduced in this paper which willautomatically sense the used energy, records these readingcontinuously, then sends it to the billing point through theexisting GSM network. Finally after processing the collected

data bill is generated using a web based system software and issend back to the customer as SMS (Short MessagingSystem).As it is web oriented once the data is updated, theregistered users and authority can monitor and analyse thegenerated bill of any month by sitting anywhere in the world.

II. LITERATURE SURVEY AND R ELATED WORKS

For this work existing meter reading techniques in India areanalyzed and conducted an extensive study on different energymeasuring instruments available now. In existing system eitheran electronic energy meter or an electro-mechanical meter isfixed in the premise for measuring the usage. The meterscurrently in use are only capable of recording kWh units. The

kWh units used then still have to be recorded by meter readersmonthly, on foot. The recorded data need to be processed by ameter reading company. For processing the meter reading,company needs to firstly link each recorded power usagedatum to an account holder and then determine the amountowed by means of the specific tariff in use.

Many systems built on various platforms have been proposed by different research groups all over the world for Automatic Meter Reading. There are two types of AMRsystems, wire-based and wireless. Power Line Carrier (PLC)and Telephone Line Network (optical/ cable) are wire-based

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AMR system and several related works are available. Many e-metering systems have now been proposed, based on GPRS,Bluetooth, GSM as explained in [1], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] and[8].Design of an Electric Energy Meter for long-distance datainformation transfers which based upon GPRS is proposed in[1]. These systems can’t be implemented so easily because theregular use of GPRS is still a dream to the common people .AGSM Energy meter with instant billing facility is introduced in

[2] and [3],but still the problem of missing SMS will degradethe accuracy and performance. A more reliable and user-friendly system with web portal for multiple access using theadvanced Visual studio .net frame work is created in this project which will manage the data efficiently even if there isloss of SMS. It makes the design different from the previous proposals. The GSM/GPRS channel is a very useful means ofcommunication as sending data as SMS turns out to be a veryhandy tool, due to its good area coverage capability and costeffectiveness. Different state electricity boards in INDIAstarted using GSM facility for fault management and so there isincreased demand for this method.

For this design, energy meter specifications and tariff

structure followed by the Kerala State Electricity Board(KSEB) are adopted. In this project the front end is Userfriendly and any employee with minimum knowledge ofcomputers can work on this software. Employees can read themeter by sitting in their office.

A. A lookback at GSM Technology and GSM meter in India.

Several transmission protocols in wired/wireless mannerwere introduced so far to read digital meters remotely atdifferent areas of India. The Digital watt-hour meters aremicroprocessor based meters which replaced traditionalelectromechanical meters.

Fig.1 Traditional Electromechanical meter Vs Electronic meter .

Tele watt meters were implemented to transmit data onmonthly basis to a remote central office through a dedicatedtelephone line and a pair of modems. A microprocessor/DSP- based meter is used in this to measure the electricityconsumption of multiple users in a residential area. A masterPC at the control centre was used to send commands to aremote meter, which in turn transmitted data back, using thePower Line Communication (PLC) technique. Thesetechniques were mainly implemented in areas that had a fixedtelephone network. Bluetooth energy meters were designed andimplemented in some areas where several meters in close proximity, communicated wirelessly with a Master PC. These

are primarily designed for low power consumption. As theywere operating within a short range (power class- dependent: 1meter, 10 meters, 100 meters) this technique was not effectiveand implemented only in areas with high population density.

So a new approach of using an energy measurementtechnique that encompasses the GSM network as a mean oftransmitting energy data is more relevant. The GSM/GPRSnetwork offers most coverage in most developed anddeveloping countries. This method is also effective in ruralareas, which are not densely populated, and in which, most people do not have access to a fixed telephone network. So in acountry like India we need to focus more on this method as itcan be implemented very easily and effectively.

According to the latest report by researcher Gartner India'smobile subscriber base should grow to 993 million by 2014,which expects the world's fastest-growing mobile market toclose 2010 with more than 660 million subscribers. India is thesecond-largest wireless market in the world after China with its618 million mobile subscribers at end-May, according to datafrom the country's telecoms regulator. Mobile connectionswere at 525 million at end of 2009.

Fig. 2 India-GSM mobile subscribers.

Latest data by the Cellular Operators Association of India(COAI) showed GSM operators had added 6.68 million in November 2012 and the GSM subscriber base was at 632.08million. GSM operators added 7.55 million new subscribers inDecember, taking the total GSM user base to 639.64 million inthe country, according to the COAI’s data released.

In this scenario the utilization of existing GSM network for metering in India will be a cost effective method for all class of

people.

III. GSM METER - ARCHITECTURE

When developing a technology that might replace onewhich has been in use for more than thirty years, not only thekey issue needs to be addressed, but added functionality andsolutions to other obstacles presented by the previoustechnology need to be addressed. Even existing meter readersand other employers have to accept the quality andeffectiveness of the proposed system.


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The engineering challenge is to develop a product that canserve as wireless system replacement for the metering and billing system currently in use. This emphasis that the meterunder development has to work under the old circumstancesand perform all the previous functions, but also be able to relaythe information in a new way and perform additional functions,without the need of replacing all meters on the electrical gridsimultaneously.

The developed AMR system consists of three main parts: adigital GSM power meter installed in every individualconsumer unit, transmission facility (SMS gateway), and billing server at the energy provider side. Overview andfunctional block details are shown in Fig. 3.

IV. DETAILED DESIGN

This GSM energy meter is constructed using the microchipsingle phase dedicated energy metering IC MCP3905A, adisplay, 8-bit PIC Microcontroller PIC16F877A and GSMmodem. A 10A class I single phase meter is designed withembedded GSM modem which utilizes the existing GSMnetwork to send its power usage value as SMS to the energy provider wirelessly. While sending the message each time, the

same data is also stored in the associated non-volatile memory(EEPROM). RTC module is also integrated in the meter tohave time stamped recording of usage details. The detaileddesign blocks are shown in Fig. 4 and Configuration ofdifferent PIC ports for performing this functionality isdemonstrated in Fig.6

Fig. 3 Overview of Proposed System.

The proposed system for energy billing is automatic, do notrequire human effort to read the meter, consumer can directlyknow the amount he has to pay at the time of bill preparationitself and can even pay the amount online.

Fig.4 Detailed Design Blocks

Fig. 5 Detailed Circuit of energy meter


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a very small coin cell (3V CMOS battery) which runscontinuously even in power failure.

Fig. 6 Configuration of PIC Ports

In the office, the GSM unit will receive these data andsoftware will calculate the total consumption of each user. Thedesign can be discussed as two broad categories, Hardwaredetailed design and software web portal design.

V. HARDWARE DETAILED DESIGN

In this system the two wire power supply is connected tothe energy metering IC through the analog front end of the

MCP3905 energy meter evaluation board which providesaverage active power information via a pulse output which may be then used to be processed by a Micro Controller Unit(MCU). The GSM unit is interfaced to the micro controller viaa MAX 232 convertor as in Fig.7 (b). User GSM modemtransmits usage details to office modem. Every house/premisehas a unique number (consumer number), which is given by thecorresponding authority.

The detailed circuit of the meter constructed using off theshelf components such as evaluation board (MCP3905A),Microcontroller (PIC16F877) and LCD (20x4) and GSMModem (Fargo Maestro -20) is shown in Fig.5.

At the input prototype area of the evaluation board a 250μ, 10A meter shunt is connected as current-sensing element.

A. Power Supply

The microcontroller and other devices get power supplyfrom AC to DC adapter or from direct ac lines through voltageregulator. The adapter output voltage will be 12V DC non-regulated. The 7805 voltage regulators are used to convert 12V to 5V DC. Circuit details are shown in Fig.7 (a).The low costDC power supply circuit included in the MCP3905 evaluation board which is created from a half wave zener diode-limitedAC signal feeding a 7805 +5V regulator can also be used.

B. External EEPROM memory

Selected EEPROM is Atmel 24C256.This memory deviceis used to store the data for off line process. i.e. it stores theamount of unit the user consumed while transferring eachSMS.

C. Real Time Clock (RTC)

This is used to maintain the real time and date in off line processing. RTC counts seconds, minutes, hours, date of themonth, month, day of the week, and year with leap-yearcompensation valid up to 2100.The RTC selected here isDS1307 .It is low cost, easy to solder, and can run for years on

Fig.7 (a) Power supply (b) MAX 232 interfacing.

D. Implementation Details

Output pulses from the metering IC are counted using thedefault timer of PIC MCU. The signal from meter throughOctocoupler is normally high (5V) and the high to lowtransition of this voltage wave indicates the occurrence of a pulse. The counting of low pulse is an inefficient method asimproper grounding issues may even be counted as a pulse bythe device. So the produced pulse is reversed before applyingto the counter. A TTL compatible inverter circuit is used for this purpose.

The microcontroller is programmed to read data from themetering IC every second. When microcontroller reads the power consumption, it is stored and current reading isincremented in its software. In this design meter is calibratedsuch that for 1 unit of energy (kWh) consumption, it generates3200 pulses in LED. (It can be calibrated for a meter constantof 1000 imp/kWh or 100 imp/kWh or 32000 imp/kWh etc as per the requirement).

Energy per count, Epc = ( I max X V rms)/3200. (1)

Where Imax is the maximum load current and Vrms is the RMSvoltage.

Energy per LED pulse, Epp =1000 X 3600/ Mpr. (2)

where Mpr is the pulse rate of the meter in impulse/ kWh.

Practical set up created for transmitter prototype developedusing the meter circuit of Fig .5 is shown below in Fig.8.Avariable load set up is connected and usage is measured.


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Fig.10 GSM Meter after casing and sample results on display.

Fig.8. Transmitter prototype.

PCB layout for the meter routed with the aid of CadenceOrcad 9.2 suite and corresponding printed board are shown inFig.9.Mechanical design and assembly of the developed meteris shown in Fig.10.The device has a plastic enclosure. It hasless weight and easy to handle. For status indication, a greenLED is placed in front side. 20x4 LCD display is there on thetop of the meter to display the reading and RTC time dateinformation. Push button switches are provided to readEEPROM content.

B. Billing Software

A web oriented GUI designed especially for e-billing,manages all received SMS readings, updates the databaseregularly, computes the monthly bill amount, and notify theconsumer his bill details through SMS. It also publishes the billin the designed web portal and consumer can log for getting theusage details any time. Printed postal mails can also be provided for respective consumer. Authority can log for bill preparation and analysis of any collected data. Information portal helps to assist the smart meter to log consumption data to

the database. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 IDE is used todevelop the web portal. Data base used is Microsoft SQLServer2005 (Fig. 11).

Fig.11 Database details.

Fig.9. Orcad layout and printed PCB.

VI. SOFTWARE DETAILED DESIGN

A. Microcontroller software design

All software used for the PIC16F877 in the control circuitrywas developed in Mikroelektronika’s MikroC PRO 4.15 IDE.The meter PIC MCU is programmed via the In-SystemProgramming (ISP) interface. PICkit 2 v 2.61 is used for programming the target PIC. GSM modem is controlled byusing AT command for all kinds of operations.The algorithmfor meter were developed by considering all the requiredoutputs. The brain of the meter is this developed firmware. Itcan be modified and updated any time, even in the field. Thefirmware is written in embedded C.

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2008 provide an integrateddevelopment environment (IDE) for maximizing developer productivity with the .NET framework. It is used to developconsole and graphical user interface applications along with

Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, andweb services in both native code together with managed codefor all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, WindowsMobile, Windows CE, .NET framework, .NET Compactframework and Microsoft Silverlight. In this application sourcecode is written in C#. The .NET version of C# is animproved version with more features and additions. Thedeveloped site can be checked by running locally on any PCusing ASP.net development server local host. Designed home page of the web portal is shown in Fig.12. It can be hosted to


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the server for practical use, once hosted the user can access itfrom anywhere through internet.

VII. R ESULTS

Designed meter is able to send the usage value at a predefined time and the status is displayed in LCD for the next5 minutes after sending, as shown above in Fig. 10.

Fig.12 Home page

Users are categorized as administrator, staff and consumer.Any user can log using the user login option available in the

web site as shown below in Fig.13. Administrator can performcategory registration, section addition, tariff updates, staffregistration and message setting. After the initial login theadministrator can connect the GSM modem to the web portalthrough serial port / USB. Initially required hardwareconfigurations have to done for the modem setup. Then byselecting the corresponding port administrator can connect it tothe system for accepting SMS from meter.

Fig.14 Generated Bill.

Example of the prepared bill by a staff member is shown inFig.14.Consumer can login to view this bill. By selecting a

particular month he can view his usage history any time.

Fig.13 User login, Category registration, Port setting, Tariff table updating.

Once it is connected it will remain as connected for thewhole system and continues receiving SMS till theadministrator disconnects it using the disconnect option.

Different staff members under the administrator are registeredusing the member registration option provided to theadministrator. These operations are demonstrated in Fig. 13.The registered staffs are assigned to a particular section andthey are registering the consumers under them. Registered staffmember can login and add any number of consumers under hissection. Also he is responsible for preparing the bills ofconsumers under him. By simple selection of consumer nameand month, automatic bill generation occurs by auto processingof the background data.

Fig.15 Consumer registration example and SMS reception in thatconsumer’s phone.

The consolidated bill prepared sent to the users mobile, fora particular month of usage, for a particular consumer isdepicted in Fig.15. Prepared Bill is successfully sent back to

the registered consumer at the time of bill generation itself.Backend database details and HTML source code details can be accessed anytime by the administrator.

VIII. CONCLUSION

Various electronic meters have been developed and are still being developed. However the use of GSM in this particularsystem provides numerous advantages over methods that have been previously used. Data transmission is charged at standardSMS rates, thus the charges are not based on the duration ofdata transmission. The cost efficient transmission of readings


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ensures that power consumption values can be transmittedmore frequently to a remote station. The implications of beingable to transmit readings more often are that energy utilitieswill be able to generate timely bills, better understand energydemand patterns, manage meter failures more efficiently andmanage fraud better.

The developed system is highly effective in the sense it isable to eliminate the drawback of serial communication. i.e

even though it lacks acknowledgement of the sent SMS it isnot affecting system performance. If a message is missing thenalso as the system is accepting the cumulative value next time

is willing to add online payment options in the hosted web page, instant payment by the consumer from anywhere in theworld is also possible.

R EFERENCES

[1] Yujun Bao and Xiaoyan Jiang, “Design of electric Energy Meter forlong-distance data information transfers which based upon GPRS”, ISA

2009. International Workshop on Intelligent Systems and Applications,2009.

[2] H.G.Rodney Tan,C.H. Lee,V.H.Mok,“Automatic power meter readingth

which includes the lost content. And while preparing bill thesystem using GSM network”, The 8Conference (IPEC 2007).

International Power Engineering

system is accepting the maximum consumption value. Theseimplementations make the designed system unique andeffective compared to the previous proposals.

The system also poses much less of a safety risk sincehuman interaction has been minimized. The generated bill isavailable as SMS at the time of generation itself and hardcopies are available to the consumer as postal mail. A soft copycan be send to the consumers e-mail if consumer is registeredwith his e-mail address .The same idea can be expanded to

water and gas meter reading system by proper modification.The designed web portal options can be added to the existingweb page of any energy provider worldwide and it can behosted for public.

The system can be modified by using latest SPImetering ICs which will provide more parameters. By using theMicrochip three phase IC MCP3909 the same idea can beextended to three phase systems also. Power factorimprovement options can be added in future. By adding aninitialization message option at the time of installation themeter time can be updated from the server. If energy provider

[3] Vivek Kumar Sehgal,Nitesh Panda, Nipun Rai Handa, “Electronic

Energy Meter with instant billing”,UKSim Fourth European ModellingSymposium on Computer Modelling and Simulation.

[4] Bharath P, Ananth N, Vijetha S, Jyothi Prakash K. V. ,“Wireless

automated digital Energy Meter”, ICSET 2008.

[5] P.K. Lee and L.L. Lai, Fieee, “A practical approach to wireless GPRSon-line power quality monitoring system”, Power Engineering SocietyGeneral Meeting, 2007.

[6] Subhashis Maitra, “Embedded Energy Meter- A new concept to measure

the energy consumed by a consumer and to pay the bill”, Power System

Technology and IEEE Power India Conference, 2008.[7] T El-Djazairy, B J Beggs and I F Stewart, “ Investigation of the use of

the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network for

metering and load management telemetry”, Electricity Distribution. Part1: Contributions. CIRED. 14th International Conference and Exhibitionon (IEE Conf. Publ. No. 438).

[8] Li Kaicheng, Liu Jianfeng, Yue Congyuan, Zhang Ming. “Remote

power management and meter-reading system based on ARMmicroprocessor”, Precision Electromagnetic Measurements Digest,2008. CPEM 2008. Conference on Digita l Object Identifier.

[9] M.P Praveen, “KSEB to introduce SMS-based fault maintenancesystem”, The Hindu News on 26/06/2011, http://www.hindu.com.


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