GSM Enabled Smart Energy Meter and Automation
of Home Appliances
Himshekhar Das1, L.C.Saikia2
1, 2
Department of Electrical Engineering
National Institute of Technology Silchar
Silchar, India
1
[email protected], [email protected]
Abstract—Electrical utilities are suffering from huge losses Energy Meter for Ontario residential have been presented in
due to power theft, inadequate usage of energy, unpaid bills, [3]. The present scenario of Smart grid pilots and key
distorted power quality. Many viable solutions are proposed out performance indicators have been investigated in [4]. The
of which smart energy metering, energy management system and feasible communication technologies for deployment in
smart home automation are some that seems to be potent enough. Advanced Metering Architecture (AMI) has been discussed
These technologies are presently used by developed countries. and a cost effective Smart Energy Meter have been proposed
Under meter data acquisition system of Restructured Accelerated in [7]. An energy efficient and user convenient Smart Meter
Power Development and Reform program (R-APDRP) scheme in has been presented in [11]. A communication network
the year 2009-10, India plans to develop Advanced Metering
architecture for Home Energy Management System (HEMS)
Infrastructure (AMI). But no effort has been made to develop an
economic model for the customers which would play a key role in
has been proposed in [12]. A smart energy meter along with
better acceptance of the scheme. In this paper, a smart energy an iOS application for reporting power consumption, power
system for the residential customers is developed and a smart generation and power quality parameters has been presented in
switch board which can curtail the need to upgrade to smart [13]. However, the investigations fail to target the practical
appliances to make the system more economic. Further, a Virtual challenges posed for implementation of Smart Energy Meter
Instrumentation has been developed which can be operate in any in India. Their work is limited to just design of economic
computer to function as In Home Display (IHD) for Energy model of Smart Energy Meter. Also, past work is mainly
Management System (EMS). based on design of EMS with dedicated equipment such liquid
crystal display (LCD). Also, no work has been reported for
Keywords— Arduino; Energy Management System; In Home smart home automation using GSM phone. Presently for
Display; Smart Energy Meter; Virtual Instrumentation optimal use of Smart Energy Meter, the appliances need to be
internet protocol (IP) addressable. In view of the above the
I. INTRODUCTION main objectives of the work are
India became the third largest producer of electricity in the a) Design of a cost effective Smart Energy Meter
world with 4.8% of global share. Out of the total power b) Design of an IHD without the use any dedicated
generated the renewable constituted 28.43% and Non- equipment.
Renewable constituted 71.57%. However due to insufficient c) GSM Based smart home automation for energy saving.
amount of fossil Indian is incurring huge losses. More than d) Smart Switchboard which will curtail the need to use
300 million people have no access to electricity. As energy expensive internet protocol (IP) addressable appliances.
saved is energy generated hence one of the proposed measures
to save electricity is to provide the customers a means to TABLE I. IMPLEMENTATION OF SMART ENERGY METER IN DIFFERENT
manage their electrical energy consumption. The primary goal COUNTRIES
is to create awareness about energy consumption and efficient Country Total number of Number of Smart
use of home appliances for energy savings. The meters deployed Smart Energy Meters
implementation of smart energy meters around different parts (in millions) Meters Share
of the world is shown in TABLE I. Indian Smart Grid Forum (in millions)
USA 150 46 30.7%
(ISGF) was set up in 2010 with the objective of facilitating Europe 281 61.2 22%
smart meter technology and stimulate the roll out of smart Canada 15 7.3 49%
meters in India. Smart metering system of different countries India 200 <1%
have been reviewed and smart meter system for Korean
residential have been developed in [1]. It also demonstrates
the effectives of In Home Display (IHD). Design of simple II. INTRODUCTION TO SMART ENERGY METER
prototype of smart energy meter using global system for A Smart Energy Meter is a device which measures the
mobile communication (GSM) and Zig-Bee has been energy consumption at certain set intervals and sends that
presented in [2]. Design of an economic model of Smart information to the utility for monitoring, management and
978-1-4678-6503-1/15/$31.00 © 2015 IEEE
billing purposes. Unlike the conventional ennergy meter which with relay is used to control hoome appliances instead of using
uses a rotating wheel for measuring energgy consumption, a individual IP-addressable appliaances.
smart meter deploys sensors for the measurrement of voltage,
current and power quality. The microcontrooller calculates the
energy consumption. Active power, voltage, load current and
indicator for automatic tripping of loadd appliances are
displayed in the IHD. Meter readings are sennt to the IHD using
X-Bee and customer’s mobile phone and utility
u using GSM.
Thus, the Smart Energy Meter establishees a bidirectional
communication between the customer and utility.
u The main
functional features of the Smart Energy Meteer are
a) Reading the voltage, current and measuring the time
difference between the current and volttage waveform.
b) Transmitting the information to the utility and Fig.1. Smart energy meter architecture
customer’s mobile phone using GSM.
c) Transmitting data to customers IHD ussing X-Bee. IV. PARTS OF SMART
M ENERGY METER
d) Remote control of home appliances ussing GSM enabled The proposed Smart Enerrgy Meter is composed of the
mobile phone. following main parts:
e) Automatic switching of home appliiances for saving
energy. a) Voltage and currennt measurement.
b) Power factor meassurement.
III. DESIGN OF SMART ENERGY
Y METER c) Relay Module forr automatic switching of home
A. The Proposed Model appliances.
d) GSM Module for communicating with utility and
In the proposed smart meter, the Hall Eff ffect current sensor remote switching of
o appliance
is used instead of current transformer to meaasure r.m.s current. e) A Secure Digital (SD) card for storing energy
A regulated voltage supply is used to meaasure the voltage. data.
These are then fed as analog input into thhe microcontroller. f) Energy Managem ment System
Power factor is measured by calculating thhe time difference
between the zero crossing of current and voltage
v waveform. A. Voltage and Current Measuurement
The energy consumption is compuuted using the Arduino UNO is an open source
s hardware microcontroller
microcontroller. The calculated energy is sent to the board which the hard of the prooposed Smart Energy Meter. Its
microcontroller connected to personal compuuter through X-bee operating voltage is 5V. It haas 14 digital input pins and 6
for plotting energy consumption currve. A Virtual analog input pins. It operates with an Atmega328 at its heart
Instrumentation has been developed for the purpose
p of using a which has 32KB of flash memory, 2KB SRAM. The
personal computer to function as the IHD thus t curtailing the ATMEGA328 is operated usinng a ceramic resonator having a
usage of dedicated equipment. It gives details about the clock speed of 16MHz.The ADC A has a resolution of 210.
consumption of energy during the different inntervals of the day. Hence every input signal is mapped
m to a value between 0-
The Smart Energy Meters utilize GSM for coommunicating with 1023.A regulated power suppply which gives output voltage
customer and utility. The Proposed smaart energy meter proportional to the input vooltage is used to measure the
architecture is shown in Fig.1. The architectuure breaks a city or voltage. It consists of a sttep down transformer with a
large area into small blocks each installled with a data transformation ratio of 230V V/6V. The output is fed to a
concentrator. Smart energy meters of a givenn locality sends its potential divider consisting off two resistances of 1400 and
energy usage to the data concentrator. The data concentrator 500. The voltage across the 500
5 resistance is fed to a diode
sends the data to the utility server for analyssis. Utility demand bridge rectifier. The full recctified wave is fed to a peak
response is received in the form of shortt message service rectifier circuit which consistts of a 1000ȝf capacitor. Such
(SMS) from the utility server via the data concentrator. The high value of capacitance is i chosen so that the charge
smart meter then takes the appropriate actionn in accordance to discharges very slowly and consequently the waveform has
the data contained in the SMS. This helps inn disconnecting the less amount of ripple .The outpput is fed across a zener diode so
power supply of a customer when the bill is not paid hence that it gives a constant outpuut voltage as the voltage drop
truncating manual intervention. The custom mer can set a fixed across a zener diode remains coonstant. One output is fed as the
monthly bill and the loads will be automaticcally controlled by GND reference for the Arduiino and the other is fed as an
the smart energy meter. The loads are switcched off when the analog input. For measuring current
c Allegro Current Sensor
energy consumption exceeds the set threshhold. However the (ACS712-30A) is used. It is a low-offset linear Hall Effect
customer is also provided the option too switch between circuit with a copper conductiion path near the surface of the
automatic switching of load appliances or manual switching die. The current flows througgh the copper conduction path
when the customer is alerted on exceedinng the set energy which generates a magnetic field, the magnetic field is
consumption. The customer is also providedd the feasibility of converted to a proportional voltage. ACS712-30A has
remote switching of appliances using GSM M enabled mobile specifications of 5V input suppply, 80 kHz bandwidth, 66 to
phone. A smart switchboard with each pluug point bypassed 185 mV/A output sensitivity. TheT voltage and current signals
are then interfaced as analog inputs into the
t Arduino UNO
microcontroller board.
B. Power Factor Measurement
Power factor is cosine of the phase diffeerence between the
current and voltage waveform. When a volttage wave is taken
as the reference, the current waveform leads or lags in
accordance to whether the phase angle betweeen the current and
voltage waveform is positive or negative.. Power factor is
calculated by converting the time differeence between the
current and voltage in radians and taking thee cosine of it. The
Fig. 3. Interfacing of ArduinoUNO
O with Relay Module
voltage and current are taken as input to XOR R gate IC LM 358
[11]. XOR gate gives a HIGH output when anny of its INPUT is D. GSM module for transmittinng data to utility and remote
HIGH. Hence, a square pulse waveform m at double the switching of appliances
frequency of the voltage and current wavee is obtained. The
A huge number of options are
a available for transmission of
power factor is calculated from the duratiion of the square
energy consumption with like Supervisory
S Computer Advisory
pulses.
and Data Acquisition (SCADA A), Public Switched Telephone
C. Relay Module for Automatic Switching off Home Network (PSTN), Wi-Fi etc. However due to widespread GSM
appliances network coverage in India GSM modem is chosen for
transmission of energy data wiith utility and remote switching
Relay board module is used for controllling higher current
of home appliances. SIM 900 GSM/GPRS module is used for
loads from microcontroller. An 8-Channnel Relay Board
Module withULN2803 is used which is shhown in Fig.2. Its communicating with the utility and the customer mobile phone
consists of eight 7A250VAC/10A24VAC electromechanical which is shown in Fig.4.This is
i the heart of automation of the
relays driven by Darlington array IC ULN28803.The number of home appliances [5], [8], [9]. The SIM900 GSM modem
channels determines the number of load apppliances which can embeds an AMR926EJ-S corre. It is capable of Quad-band
be controlled using the relay module. The Normally Closed GSM/GPRS connectivity. Thee Arduino UNO calculates the
terminal of relays are connected to plug point and COM energy consumption and transmmits it to the utility once in every
terminal is connected to one of the AC teerminal. The relay hour. The utility can also commmunicate with the smart energy
board is driven by 12 AC voltage. The outputt pins of ULN2803 through the data concentrator for demand side management.
drives the relays and the input pins are conneected to the digital The customer can switch off looads using GSM enabled mobile
output pins of the microcontroller pins. Thhe interfacing with phone through a SMS. The smaart meter also sends SMS to alert
Arduino UNO is shown in Fig.3. When W the energy the customer when the energy consumption exceeds and when
consumption exceeds the set threshold thhe microcontroller it receives any demand side requests. It is also used for
digital output pin goes high and the relayy switches off the transmitting energy consumptioon form the Arduino connected
particular load. Hence managing energy effiiciently and giving to the measuring equipments to the one connected with the
personal computer which conttains the virtual instrumentation
the feasibility of implementing dynamic tariff
ff.
program of In Home Display.
Fig. 2. Eight channel relay module with ULN2803
Fig. 4. SIM900 GSM module with RS232 TTL
E. Secure Digital card for storing Energy Data
D micro program infinite number of times since it acts as a
For storing Energy data a Secure Digital (SD) card module standalone equipment. V[500]], I[500] are the integer arrays
reader as shown in Fig.4. is used. A SD caard functions as a which holds the voltage and cuurrent samples The maximum of
flash memory for storing the energy data. d The energy V[500], I[500] Vmax and Imax is computed form the
consumption is calculated after an intervall of every minute instantaneous samples of volttage and current waveform each
since it would not be economical to transmit the energy data to sampled at an interval of 1 millisecond.
m The power factor is
the IHD every minute so the data for an hoour is stored in the calculated by calculating the time
t difference, converting it to
SD card and then transmitted after an intervval of every hour. radians and taking the cosinee of the angle. The power is
However the user is also provided with the option
o of invoking calculated using Vrms, Irms annd power factor (pf). The power
the Arduino UNO to supply with the eneergy data when it is then written to a file in the SD card. If power increases the
requires. For interfacing with the Arduino thhe chip select (CS) threshold set, SMS is sent to thhe customer. The microcontroller
pin is taken as pin no 10 and the pin 8 off Arduino UNO is checks the status of automaticc switching and unread SMS. If
taken as the power pin. So we have to write a HIGH output to automatic load switching is ON O the loads are switched off
pin 8 of Arduino UNO. according to priority order set by the customer. The relay PIN
corresponding to the load is written
w high so that the load is
switched off. If automatic swiitching is OFF the customer is
alerted to switch it on. It checcks if it receives any SMS from
the utility as well as the custoomer for remote switching if it
does then the suitable action is taken. After intervals of an hour
the energy data stored in the file
f is sent to the utility and the
IHD using GSM and Xbee resspectively and the file is deleted
so that the file size of energy data does not exceed the capacity
of the SD card.
Fig. 5. SD Card module reader for Arduino UNO
F. Energy Management System
Energy Management System (EMS) is a vital part of a
smart energy metering system for residentiaal customers. EMS
can help an individual in monitoring and managing energy
consumption. Dedicated equipments like LC CD which function
as IHD are used as interactive panels for the customers. A
study conducted among 53 household in Cheongju 48
household showed a reduction in energy consumption
c after
installing IHD [1]. It has been also reported thhat user awareness
can yield energy savings up to 20%. It is not economical to use
dedicated instruments for energy managem ment system hence
we developed a virtual instrumentation whicch can function as
an interactive panel with the user. The eneergy data from the
developed Smart Energy Meter is sent via X-Bee X radio to an
Arduino connected to a computer through itss data port. The VI
reads the data packet from the port and plots the energy
consumption curve. It also shows the rms vooltage, rms current,
power factor, when automatic load tripping have
h taken place.
V. ALGORITHM
A. The Flow Chart of Proposed Model
A flow chart is a diagram that repreesent the flow of
processes or the algorithm of a program. Thee flow chart of the
micro program of the Arduino UNO used is i shown in Fig.6.
Polling is the phenomenon where a microccontroller runs the
Fig. 6. Flowchart
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