MPSPSEM

Multi-Purpose Single-Phase Smart Energy Meter (MPSPSEM) Prototype Design

Proposal

Prepared by: Sofanias hadgu

Milat halefom

Elsa g/tsadkan

Introduction

Electricity is a major foundation of energy in the world and used in

every urbane country for household, industrial and business purpose.
Recently owing to raise in number of new housing, business-related and
trade developments in Ethiopia, the number of clients of electricity been
improved in the network distribution. In Tigrai, most energy meters are
traditional ones or electromechanical energy meters and the number of
electricity consumers is also 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

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revisit. Going to 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.
Additionally, there is a chance for consumers as well as meter readers to
do the corruption.

Figure 1: Electromechanical Energy Meter

Therefore, to solve this problem we proposed to design and implement

the prototype for a Multi-Purpose Single Phase Smart Energy Meter
(MPSPSEM), which includes three main terminals: user end, meter end,
and authority end, which are shown in Figure below. Each part is
authorized by its identification; user identification number (UIN), meter
identification number (MIN), and authority identification number (AIN).
AIN has built-in remote access to control and operate all functionalities
in the MPSPSEM payment mode switchover (prepaid or postpaid
mode), connection–reconnection, UIN, and recharge center setting. UIN
has access only to getting meter

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information and remote meter switching, and MIN sends necessary

confirmation SMS to AIN and/or UIN after every operation. The
hardware components of the MPSPSEM comprise a voltage sensor unit,
a current sensor unit, an energy measurement IC, a microcontroller, a
GSM modem, an LCD display, a power supply unit, an EEPROM, a low
credit alarm (Red LED and Green LED) and a trip relay. This smart
energy can be configured and reconfigured as postpaid or prepaid
remotely simply by short message service without changing hardware. If
a customer wants to recharge his energy meter using prepaid mode, then
he/she can transfer to the smart energy meter from his mobile account
balance or bank account. Then the user will receive a notification SMS
after complete recharge. According to the power utilization the amount
will be reduce. The energy measurement unit (circuit) continuously
calculates the energy consumption, sends it to the microcontroller to
display it in the liquid crystal display (LCD). When the amount reaches
a critical value, the user will receive an SMS (short messaging service)
which shows the payment mode is changed into the post payment mode,
and in the smart meter the alarm will sound, the red LED will be on.
Then the smart meter will work for a limited period of time before the
microcontroller finally switches the trip relay on to disconnect the
electric power to the customer and the user will get notification of
disconnection via SMS from the GSM module of the smart energy
meter. Then the client should recharge his/her smart energy meter with
some amount of consumption from his mobile’s account balance/ bank
account to reconnect to the power utility.

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Figure 2: System model of proposed MPSPSEM

Statement of the Problem

In Ethiopia, commonly our utilities have got used to the manual process
and they go along with it even though there are many concerns
associated with it. Because of the human errors after getting faulty bill, it
is problem of user to get it corrected from the energy supply board. In
that case, customer has to visit the office, stand in a queue and get it
corrected. The problem is just because of human intervention. To avoid
human intervention in the billing process, in this new generation, a smart
reading meter system came into use.

Objectives

The main objective of this project is to design and implement a Multi-

Purpose Single-Phase Smart Energy Meter that will be able to dictate
any bypass by energy theft as well as to recharge the meter through user

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mobile balance or bank account using the existing cellular

communication technology. The objectives include:
To design a power supply unit, which supplies power to all ICs of the
prototype such as the microcontroller, real time clock (RTC), and
communication unit (GSM modem).
To design a voltage sensing unit (a voltage divider circuit) and two
current sensing units (current transformers) which measure both voltage
and current to the energy-metering unit respectively.
To design auto calibrating energy measurement unit, which gives
information for active energy, reactive energy and apparent energy as
data or frequency (pulse) output.
To use a microcontroller to perform all the functions inside the smart
energy meter such as communication with energy measurement unit,
calculation based on the received data, display of electrical parameters,
tariff and cost of electricity, tamper detection, data management with
EEPROM, communication with the communication unit, and power
disconnection and reconnection via the trip relay.
To use a Real time clock which keeps track of the current time. It
provides time and date information and alarm signals.
To implement a GSM modem, which receives balance updated,
initiated by the user’s mobile phone and sends short messaging services
(SMS) to the customer’s mobile phone about a critical consumption.
To utilize an alarm and a Red LED to indicate when the consumption
reaches its smallest value.
An EEPROM (Electrical Erasable Programmable Read Only
Memory) is used for consumption data backup during power failure.

Methodology:

The implementation of this work involves the hardware and software

stages. The hardware is the development of the energy meter while the
software aspect involves the programming and monitoring commands
development.

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The voltage-sensing unit:

As in most digital meters, we will use simple resistor dividers as voltage

sensors due to low cost. Figure 2 shows the configuration of a resistor
divider type voltage sensor.
Current sensing units:

The current sensing unit typically consists with current sensors and
anti-aliasing filters. The four types of current sensors widely used in
smart meters are Hall Effect based current sensors, current
transformers, shunt resistors and Rogowski coils. However, for our
design it is better to choose two current sensors, one for sensing the
main line current and the other for neutral line current sensing to be
used as feedback for the energy measurement unit for tampering
detection. That is if there is a large deviation between the sensed
current values from the sensors, then that means one of the lines are
disconnected or bypassed by the user and the smart meter will notify
the user via SMS he/she is disconnected due to his/her theft activity.
Power supply unit:

This module typically consists of step-down transformers, rectifiers, AC-

DC converters, DC-DC converters and regulators. Its design is based on
the consideration that it shall supply sufficient power to the
components of the energy meter such as the MCU (Microcontroller
Unit), Real Time Clock (RTC), and Communication Systems (GSM
module).
Microcontroller Unit (MCU):
All functions inside the smart meter are performed by the MCU. It is
considered as the core of the meter. It controls the following functions
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 Communication with the energy measurement chip

 Calculations based on the data received
 Sending electrical parameters, tariff and cost of electricity to the LCD
 Tamper detection
 Data management with EEPROM
 Communication with the communication devices
 Power management

Real Time Clock:

This essential hardware provides the accurate time and date
information as well as alarm signals to the microcontroller. This clock
shall be very accurate to avoid drifts.

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Liquid Crystal Display (LCD):

This will add a user interface so that the user can remain up-to-date on
information. It will display confirmation when the user recharges
his/her smart energy meter, so the customer knows his payment did in
fact go through. It will also display their remaining balance, current
usage, and estimated time remaining.
Trip Relay:
It is a solid-state type, which receives control signal for disconnection
and reconnection from the micro controller. That is when the power
consumption gets lower than the critical value; the microcontroller
sends a command signal to switch the trip relay off. Moreover, when
the user recharges the smart energy meter using his/her cell phone, the
MCU turns the solid-state relay on to reconnect the customer to the
utility.
EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only
Memory):
The EEPROM available in the energy meter is used to store the active
energy, reactive energy and maximum demand.
Alarm/LEDs:
Both the alarm and LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) are used to aid the
client know the minimum remaining consumption in the smart meter.
Communication unit (GSM Modem):
The GSM (Global System for mobile communication) modem is
wireless base modem, which accepts the sim card and works on the
principle of user mobile phone subscription.
Software Description:
Turbo C:
Turbo C is a discontinued Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
and compiler for the C programming language. As an IDE, it included a
source code editor, a fast compiler, a linker and

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an offline help file for reference. It was noted for its integrated
development environment, small size, fast compile speed,
comprehensive manuals and low price. Turbo C features:
 Inline assembly with full access to the C language symbolic structures
and names - this allowed programmers to write some assembly language
codes right into their programs without the need for a separate
assembler.
 Support for all memory models-This had to do with the segmented
memory architecture used by 16-bit processors of that era, where each
segment was limited to 64 kilobytes (Kb). The models were called tiny,
small, medium, large and huge, which determined the size of the data
used by a program, as well as the size of the program itself.
 Speed or size optimization-The compiler could be configured to
produce an executable program that was either fast or small in size, but
not both.
 Constant folding -This feature allowed the Turbo C compiler to
evaluate constant expressions during compile time rather than during run
time.

Proteus:
 Proteus PCB design combines the ISIS schematic capture and ARES
PCB layout programs to provide a powerful, integrated and easy to use
suite of tools for professional PCB design. All Proteus PCB design
products include:
An integrated shape based auto router and a basic layout. It combines
a superb mixed mode circuit simulator based on the industry standard.
ISIS of PROTEUS was used in simulation of circuits, testing of
programs and algorithms. CPU Models available for microcontrollers
such as the PIC and 8051 series. Interactive peripheral models include
LED and LCD displays, a universal matrix keypad, and a whole library
of switches, pots, lamps, LEDs etc. are available in PROTEUS which
makes it very user friendly.

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