Figure 1. Functional Block Diagram (Sowmya et al., 2021)
Electricity is an integral part of our lives, and hence its consumption should be monitored and controlled. In most cases, consumers find it difficult to monitor electricity consumption of appliances. This paper creates a unique platform for both consumers and the power generation companies and helps to reconfigure the loads based on the needs of the consumers. The proposed meter is designed using Arduino Uno and a Wi-Fi module. The real time data obtained by the proposed meter are stored in cloud storage and the same is sent to consumers via the digital mode using IoT. With end-toend energy consumption estimates, a user can know the projected monthly electricity bill, and once two-way communication is established, both the consumer and energy producer can effectively control loads, leading to responsible consumption and production. This system provides information with greater clarity and helps consumers to cope with their monthly/annual budget for electricity bill.
Typically, an energy meter refers to a device that measures the amount of electricity consumed by an electrically powered device for billing purposes. The electromechanical meters used electrical induction as the operating principle first implemented in Blathy's meters in 1889 (Patel et al., 2019). However, there were several changes implemented in several versions of electricity meters with improvement in technologies to increase accuracy of the measurement of power consumption.
As the electromechanical meter does not provide information about instantaneous value of current, power factor and energy consumption, there is less clarity in the usage pattern that leads to ambiguity in controlling and monitoring electricity consumption. The proposed Aurdino based system discussed in this paper, includes measurement of AC voltage, current and computes the power factor based on phase angle and estimates energy consumption for a particular time period. This data is stored in cloud storage and the same will be shared to consumers through a user application similar to the design the authors use in Raspberry Pi (Sowmya et al., 2021).
Some other researchers are also using light sensing methods for taking data from traditional LED blinking meters. Although receiving a signal from a blinking LED with a light sensor, it is not a reliable method. The lightning condition of every place is not equal and the threshold value will vary for different situations and mounting light sensors properly on an energy meter is a very crucial task (Mahfuz et al., 2020).
In the existing system, a static energy meter will be provided at every consumer point which will record the amount of power consumed by the consumer. At the end of every month human operator from electricity board visits the residents to issue the bill (Prathik et al., 2018). In this system, there is no alert message given to the consumer about how much power they have consumed every day so that they can plan and effectively utilize their electric appliances and cut down the electricity bill. In addition, in the existing system, if any faulty electrical appliances consume more power than their rated power, the consumer will only know about it at the end of the month. (Prakash et al., 2019).
The smart energy monitoring system refers to self-estimation of power consumption for a future period. It includes the measurement of voltage, current and power factor from the service line and estimates energy consumption for a particular time period and the power consumed by the consumer and the estimated consumption in the future will be notified. By estimating energy consumption for future periods, the user can know the monthly bill in advance and possibly save the monthly budget on energy bills. Functional block diagram of a proposed system is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Functional Block Diagram (Sowmya et al., 2021)
For current measurement Hall Effect current sensor is used where the current can be measured without contact. Hall Effect is the production of voltage across an electrical conductor, transverse to an electric current in the conductor under a magnetic field perpendicular to the current.
As the Arduino is limited to read the voltage ranges from 0-5 volts, it is necessary to build a voltage divider circuit to measure the service line voltage to step down voltage to a value which should come under the limit of the microcontroller.
Power factor plays a very important role while calculating energy consumption for non-resistive loads. Here the power factor is calculated based on the phase difference between the voltage and current using zero crossing detectors.
Figure 2 shows the Microcontroller used in a proposed system. Being a controller circuit, it takes signal from voltage divider circuit, current sensor, and power factor circuit and transfers the estimated data to cloud storage using Wi-Fi module.
Figure 2. Microcontroller (Arduino UNO)
Four channel relay unit shown in Figure 3, is used as a control switch. It helps in load reconfiguration whenever needed.
Figure 3. Four Channel Relay Unit
The real time values are updated to consumers using ESP8266-12E Wi-Fi module (shown in Figure 4) as it is connected to cloud storage. Here, GSM can be used for backup purposes, if there is any Internet failure.
Figure 4. Wi-Fi (ESP 8266) Module
Power factor = cosine Φ
where, Φ = phase difference between voltage and current
Power = voltage*current*power factor
Energy = Power*time
Wireless communication modules aid in the conversion of the conventional energy meters to smart energy meters. Those smart energy meters eliminate the need of man power metering (Clenitiaa at al., 2017). So, it is beneficial and effective to move towards wireless communication technologies in this world of modernization. Detailed circuit design of proposed work on Porteous 8.0 is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Detailed Circuit Design on Proteus 8.0
Methodology of proposed work involves getting signal from current sensor, voltage sensor and power factor circuit. Data collected from every sensor is fed to microcontroller as a input. Using the collected data, a calculation of current energy consumption and an estimate of future consumption can be performed, and the resulting consumption data will be sent to the consumer via the IoT platform. The pictorial representation of methodology is shown in Figure 5 and the fabricated circuit is shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6. Methodology of Implementation
Proposed system calculates the amount of energy consumption per day, by using the obtained data it estimates the consumption for future periods such as weekly and monthly basis as shown in Table 1 and cost estimation is given in Table 2.
Table 1. Future estimation Based on Present Consumption
We can distinguish proposed system from conventional meter as it provides the energy consumption details per day and billing along with the future estimation of energy usage such as weekly and monthly basis. With this data on the present electricity consumption and projected calculations, the consumer can have better clarity on what their monthly bill would be if they maintain the same pattern of energy consumption, and this will resolve most of the consumer complaints regarding their electricity bills.
Table 2. Future Billing Based on Present Consumption
This paper provides consumers with a unique platform for obtaining estimated power consumption over the IoT using Arduino and Wi-Fi as control and transmitting devices, resulting in proper control over monthly electricity bills, and the consumer can also reconfigure loads in according to priority based on current consumption data. It improves the awareness of energy consumption and conservation.
The smart energy monitoring and controlling system can be further enhanced by incorporating appropriate circuits to verify grounding efficiency and providing automatic multiple load scheduling. Implementation of Near Field Communication (NFC) tag in a proposed system gives the instant access to the associated Wi-Fi network which is more beneficial to the consumer and it standardizes the proposed system in a great amount.