Delhi Technological University
B.Tech Major Project Report
Smart Energy Meter
Made By
Saurabh Khatak Subhash Kumar Tarunesh Kumar Gautam
2K17/EE/191 2K17/EE/211 2K17/EE/222
[email protected] shivkmrraut@gmail .com [email protected]
7701848776 9958323328 7011295132
Supervisor
Dr. Prakash Chittora
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
[email protected]
INDEX
Overview 2
Market Analysis 4
Proposed System Architecture 6
How are we going to calculate readings ? 7
IOT Device used 8
Backend server 9
Frontend User interface 10
Images 10
Communication Protocol Used 12
Source Code 13
What Next? 14
Overview
Excessive energy consumption, electricity in particular, is becoming a major concern in present
day society, not only due to economical but also due to environmental issues. Over the past years,
regulations have been applied to manufacturers, instructing them to produce and distribute
energy efficient electrical appliances, hoping to solve the problem by delivering sustainable tools
to the hands of the general consumer. However, the general public is not aware of how to take full
advantage of these efforts. In order to solve this issue, there is the need to create tools which
allow the general public to understand their electricity consumption behaviour and become more
energy efficient consumers
Also in the present billing system the distribution companies are unable to keep track of the
changing maximum demand of consumers. The consumer is facing problems like receiving
estimated bills. The solution for all these problems is to keep track of the consumers load
periodically , which will be held to assure accurate billing, track maximum demand and to
detect threshold value. These are all the features to be taken into account for designing an
efficient energy billing system.
The goal of this project is to develop a low cost electricity metering system by converting
traditional meters into smart meters, which are capable of displaying information in a
user-friendly manner, with the potential to encourage sustainable energy usage within
residential environments. It should also be easy to deploy and require low maintenance efforts.
Several other systems existent in the market already perform similar functionalities lacking,
however, the cost efficiency that would make it a market appealing product.As well as this system
enables the electricity department to read the meter readings monthly without a person visiting
each house.
All of this can be achieved by using Embedded Technologies that continuously monitor and record
the energy meter reading and send them to a backend server which can be further displayed on
a web page to the consumer in real time.
Problems of traditional meters
1. It is a time consuming procedure.
2. There is always a chance of human error while taking the manual meter reading
3. There is no check and balance and verification procedure of this meter reading.
4. There is always a chance of theft and corruption
5. Extra human power is required.
6. Consumer is not updated of his usage
7. Consumers may not get the bill slip within the due date.
Proposed Smart Meter
We are aiming to construct a smart energy meter with the following features and advantages
Market Analysis
Google PowerMeter [Wikipedia]
Google PowerMeter was a software project of Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, to help
consumers track their home electricity usage. The development of the software was part of an
effort by Google to invest in renewable energy, electricity grid upgrades, and other measures that
would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It was launched on October 5, 2009 and ended on
September 16, 2011.
The software was designed to record the user's electricity usage in near real-time. According to the
company, if half of America's homes' energy use was cut by ten percent, it would equal the
average energy used by eight million cars.
It was hoped that this tool would raise the home-owner's awareness of how much energy they use
and make users more energy efficient. PowerMeter was intended for use with smart meters able
to track electricity usage in more detail than standard electric meters. According to Google, in 2009
there were approximately 40 million smart meters in use worldwide. By early 2009, approximately
7% of US homes had a smart meter installed
Microsoft Hohm [Wikipedia]
Microsoft Hohm was an online web application by Microsoft that enables consumers to analyze
their energy usage and provides energy saving recommendations.
Announced on June 24, 2009, Microsoft Hohm was built on the Windows Azure cloud operating
system. Microsoft licensed the Home Energy Saver energy simulation program developed at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to drive Microsoft Hohm. It was publicly released on July 6,
2009.
Home Energy Saver and Hohm received an R&D 100 Award in 2010.
The Hohm service was discontinued on May 31, 2012 due to a lack of consumer uptake.
Indian Market
Most of the smart meters used in India are smart only for discom and substation but they are not
providing any useful information to their users.
They send data to discom and substations but do not show real time usage to their users in most
of the cases.
Some of them which shows users info are not that much user friendly
Some of them require an extra equipment for prepaid recharging system
Cost is also an another problem for end users
So by this project we want to solve all the above problems
We want to show all the energy usage data to users in as much user friendly way using real time
graphs , weekly and monthly graphs.
We will also predict and tell users how to reduce their bills by analysing their energy usage habits.
We want to provide all of these features at a low price.
We also want to encourage users to save energy by ranking users on the basis of their energy
usages.
Proposed System Architecture
The system’s architecture comprises three main blocks - h
ardware , frontend and backend. Each
one with its specific components and interactions between them. Frontend part consists of the
user interface and backend is the server software. There is only one backend server for all the
users of smart meters. The hardware and the backend is connected via the Internet using MQTT
protocol as a communication channel, following a client-server scheme, where the first is the client
and the second the server side. The electricity meter is integrated with a light sensor module
which is connected to a microcontroller. The light sensor module will help in calculating the
reading. The microcontroller is continuously sending all the data to our backend software. The
backend server maintains a database. The backend is continuously sending all the data to the
frontend user interface. Users can use the graphs to check their electricity consumption behaviour
and can improve it further to save more. Users can set alarms which will alert the user whenever
there is any usage above the set limit. Users can also increase or decrease the power usage limits.
We will add more features in future.
1. SEM sends data (readings & other metadata) to backend server periodically
2. Backend stores the data in the database.
3. User at frontend receives continuous updates from backend
How are we going to calculate readings ??
We can see a Red LED on the meter continuously blinks which counts the meter reading. Based on
The blinking, the units are counted. Normally, Pulsating LED blinks 3200 times to indicate the 1
unit of consumption. So, In our project these pulses generated by the meter are detected by a
light sensor module. The light sensor module (Optocoupler or LDR) employs a photoresistor to
sense the intensity of light incident on it and the comparator triggers the digital output.
In the case of an electricity meter, a pulse output corresponds to a certain amount of energy
passing through the meter (kWh/Wh). For single-phase domestic electricity meters each pulse
typically corresponds to 1 Wh (3200 pulses per kWh). It can be different for different vendors but
we handle it out backend software
This method can also be used in Water and gas meters. They will usually be marked to show the
quantity of water (litres/gallons) or gas (cubic meters/cubic feet) that each pulse represents.
1 unit = 3200imp/kWh
1 UNIT: Normally, the basic unit of electricity is Kilowatt hour (KWh). 1kWh = 1000 watt for 1 hour.
Example, Ten 100watt bulbs used for 1 hour gives 1kWh.
Unit Consumption = No. of pulses/3200
If no. of pulses are 1000 then unit consumption can be calculated as follows,
Unit Consumption = No. of pulses/3200 = 1000/3200 = 0.3125 Unit
UNIT CHARGE
Unit charge= unit consumption*unit rate Rs.
For example if a Unit charge at an area is 5 Rs. then unit charge can be as follows,
Unit charge = Unit consumption*unit rate Rs. = 0.3125*5 = 1.5625 Rs
IOT Device used
To calculate the readings and send them to the backend server we
use NodeMCU.
NodeMCU consists of a builtin ESP8266 wifi enabled chip. The
ESP8266 is a l ow-cost Wi-Fi chip developed by Espressif Systems
with TCP/IP protocol.
● NodeMCU is breadboard friendly and includes USB to serial
interface.
● NodeMCU can be programmed using Lua scripting , C/C++ using Arduino IDE , or ESP8266
SDK. In this project, we will program NodeMCU using Arduino IDE.
● NodeMCU has Arduino like Analog (i.e. A0) and Digital (D0-D8) pins on its board.
● NodeMCU supports serial communication protocols i.e. UART, SPI, I2C etc.
● Small size , Low cost , Low power usage of NodeMCU make it preferable for this project.
We will integrate our light sensor module with NodeMCU to calculate readings then we will
program our reading calculation algorithm on NodeMCU in C/C++ using Arduino IDE
Finally, after all the processing NodeMCU will send readings to our backend server using the
inbuilt wifi chip of NodeMCU.
Backend server
So NodeMCU is periodically sending the readings and other metadata to the backend server.
Server has to store all the data in the relational database to process it further. Here we will use
mySQL database to store the data. We will design the complete backend using Python Django
Framework.
The server is centralized and maintains the reading record of many users of the smart meter.
Server will also handle all the user requests and send the electricity consumption data to the user.
It also handles the messaging system.
Technologies Used
Python and Django
Frontend User interface
We designed the frontend of the website using HTML CSS Javascript.
The website will receive all the data from our backend server.
It will display all the relevant data in a user-friendly way using graphs and tables.
All the data will be updated in real time.
Technologies Used
HTML CSS JavaScript
Images
Login page
Installed Meter Page
Real Time Usage Page [under development]
Meter Details and Usage History Page
Readings Page
Communication Protocol Used
We will use MQTT Protocol . It stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport. It is one of the
most commonly used protocols in IoT projects. It was designed by Andy Stanford-Clark (IBM) and
Arlen Nipper in 1999 for connecting Oil Pipeline telemetry systems over satellites.
Why MQTT ?
● It is a lightweight messaging protocol that uses publish/subscribe operations to exchange
data between clients and the server.
● Its small size, low power usage, minimized data packets and ease of implementation make
the protocol ideal for the “machine-to-machine” or “Internet of Things” world.
● It is quicker (faster) than other request-response based APIs like HTTP.
● It is developed on the base of the TCP/IP protocol.
Source Code
https://github.com/tarunesh1234/SEM
What Next?
We will purchase all the equipment needed.
We will program the Microcontroller unit [NdeMCU].
We will integrate all the above things.
We will finish this till January end.
After that we will publish a paper.
