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 
saurabhkgr18@gmail.com  shivkmrraut@gmail .com  taruneshkumar1234@gmail.com 
7701848776  9958323328  7011295132  
     

Supervisor 
Dr. Prakash Chittora 
Assistant Professor 
Dept. of Electrical Engineering 
prakashchittora@dtu.ac.in 

 
  

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.