Construction Of A WiFi-Based Energy Meter (Prepaid Meter)

With the advent of Internet and computational era, not only opportunity to send and receive data between humans, but also among the devices without human control over it. This is known as Internet of Things (IoTs) concept which can be applied for solving the growing issue of power/energy management. A solution is a cheap and easy to implement and manage energy monitoring system for our daily usage of electric power. In order to overcome the human errors, manual labor and cost reducing in energy consumption with more efficiency for the power management system, in this paper, we focus mainly on IoT’s energy monitoring. The proposed design is to implement a very low cost wireless sensor network and protocol for smart energy and web application capable of automatically reading the unit and sending the data automatically for the power users to view their current energy meter reading. By using this system, the users will be aware of the electricity usage in his/her home to reduce the power wastage and cost of consumption. The system consists of a digital energy meter, ESP8266 WiFi module and web applications for management system. The ESP8266 WiFi module will be embedded into the meter and implement the TCP/IP protocol for the communications between the meter and web application. The experimental results show that the proposed system works very well with efficiency, and it is feasible to implement in practical applications for very low cost-build automatic energy meter reading.

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER PAGE

TITLE PAGE

APPROVAL PAGE

DEDICATION

acknowledgement

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

1.0      INTRODUCTION

1.1      BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT

1.2            PROBLEM STATEMENT

1.3            AIM AND OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT

1.4            PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT

1.5            SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT

1.6            APPLICATION OF THE PROJECT

1.7            BENEFIT OF THE PROJECT

1.8            SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

1.9            PROJECT ORGANISATION

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1            HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF AN ELECTRIC METER

2.2            REVIEW OF UNIT OF MEASUREMENT

2.3            OTHER UNITS OF MEASUREMENT

2.4            TYPES OF METERS

2.5            REVIEW OF RELATED STUDY

2.6            REVIEW OF NINE DIGIT LCD DISPLAY

2.7            PARTS OF FIRE ALARM

CHAPTER THREE

3.0      METHODOLOGY

3.1      BLOCK DIAGRAM

3.2      CIRCUIT DIAGRAM

3.3      CIRCUIT OPERATION

3.4     CIRCUIT DESCRIPTION

3.5      PARTS LIST

3.6     WORKING OF ACS712 CURRENT SENSOR

3.7      SYSTEM WORKING EXPLANATION

3.7      SYSTEM SETUP PROCEDURE

3.8       PROGRAMING EXPLANATION

3.9       CODES

CHAPTER FOUR

4.0      TESTING AND RESULTS

4.1            CONSTRUCTION PROCEDURE AND TESTING

4.2            ASSEMBLING OF SECTIONS

4.3            CASING AND PACKAGING

4.4            MOUNTING PROCEDURE

4.5            TESTING

4.6                BILL OF ENGINEERING MEASUREMENTS AND EVALUATION

CHAPTER FIVE

5.1            CONCLUSION

5.2            RECOMMENDATION

5.3            REFERENCES

CHAPTER ONE

1.0                                                        INTRODUCTION

1.1                                         BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT

Electric energy consumed by the power devices is measured by a gadget known as an energy meter. Since 1980s, the energy meter’s journey started. When there were large energy meters which have been made with lots of innovations in energy meters to reduce its size and also the weight. Particularly, enhancement in accuracy, specifications and features of energy meters has been a topic of discussion.

In Nigeria, electromechanical energy meters were used for a long time. These meters work by checking and figuring the quantity of turns of an electrically directing metal plate which is made to rotate at a speed in respect to the power experiencing the meter. Those electromechanical energy meters are being supplanted by the newly digitized meters due to different problems like there is no way to upgrade those energy meters, its accuracy was limited and those meters were easy to manipulate because direction of revolving disc can be easily reversed.

Nowadays, digital energy meters can measure voltage, current and power also but electromechanical energy meters can only measure active power. Digital meters measure energy usage by highly integrated circuits, by capitalizing the voltage and current that gives the instantaneous power in watts. Digital meters show usage of electricity in digits on a liquid crystal display and those meters are highly accurate, inexpensive, theft reluctant, etc. The latest form of digital meter is the prepaid meter.

A prepaid electricity meter is a KWH (Kilowatt Hour) meter, measuring electrical consumption. The main difference is that this KWh meter counts backwards as the electricity is consumed and has a relay (an automatic switch) which disconnects the power when the KWh reading on the meter reaches zero. It further incorporates hardware which has the ability to decipher the pin number entered and convert it to KWh.

In this work we are focusing on Prepaid Electricity Energy Meter using Wi-Fi  module which is a good concept in which you can recharge its balance, like we do in our mobile phones and also track energy usage based on device, learn trends and monitor from your Android or iOS device. In this project we are building a automated system by using Arduino and wifi module. You can recharge the electricity balance through this system, just by sending a SMS but energy usage based on device, learn trends and monitor from your Android or iOS device via wifi. It can also disconnect the home power supply connection, if there is low or zero balance in the system. And this system will reads the energy meter readings and automatically send some updates to user’s mobile phone like low balance alert, cut off alert, resume alert and recharge alert.

1.2                                                PROBLEM STSATEMENT

There are many problem associated with the conventional meter. Following are some problems observed in those energy meters which should be rectified by using Wi-Fi based prepaid meter:

i.           Meter reading and other related tasks like bill payment are performed by a large number of staff i.e., large number of employees are required.

ii.          An expansive number of staff is utilized for meter reading and other related assignments like bill payment.

iii.         Billing errors due to carelessness of meter readers during meter reading and sometime billing estimation.

iv.        Consumer has to stand in queue for hours for bill payment.

v.          Careless usage of electricity by consumer who is unaware of its cost.

vi.        Consumers are not bound to pay bill on time

1.3                                  AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

At the end of this work, student involves shall be able to construct a digital types of electricity billing meter that sends electricity billing information to the user via WiFi this device that does the following work: at the end of this work, students involved shall be:

i.                    Able to build this device that does the above function.

ii.                  Able to learn how to embed arduino and Wi-Fi module with prepaid meter.

iii.                how to connect some Wi-Fi module with the above designed Smart Energy Meters

1.4                                         SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT

The functions of this device are what make it different from other types of prepaid meter. Such functions are:

i.                    It recharge  electricity balance through Wi-Fi, By using this device, one can easily monitor, analyze and save the energy consumption. With Cloud/App service, you can monitor it anytime from anywhere. With flexible function and open interface, you can monitor the data locally via LAN or upload the data to your own server.

ii.                   It can also connect or disconnect the home power supply connection, if there is low or zero balance in the system.

iii.                 And this system will reads the energy meter readings and automatically send some updates to user’s mobile phone like low balance alert, cut off alert, resume alert and recharge alert.