SSOl14 1569844493

Monitoring and Remote Control of Energy

Consumption by WiFi Networl(s
Smart Energy Saving System

Sergio Zarza Sanchez, Rosa M. Fernandez-Cantf, Jose A. Lazaro, Isidre Ortega Gomez, Jose A. Altabas Navarro
Signal Theory and Communications Opt. (TSC), Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) • BarcelonaTech
Building 04 Campus Nord, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
{szarza, rfernandez, jose. lazaro, jose.antonio.altabas }@tsc.upc.edu, isidre.orgo@gmail.com

Abstract- In this paper we present a modular system for
remote monitoring and control of energy consumption. In
particular, we demonstrate the application of the proposed
system for electric energy monitoring and control in domestic or
medium size office installations. This whole system is integrated
in a single platform and consists of different modules: one or
several smart plugs including a wireless communication interface
for connection to a WiFi network, and a centralized application
server. The developed system allows a real time monitoring of the
energy consumption, and the control and scheduling of remote
switches, providing the tools for an optimal energy saving. This
monitoring and control leads to a significant cost reduction and
to a sustainable management of energy resources beneficial for
the environment. The consumption results are also presented for
a typical scenario with five power outlets.
Index Terms-remote monitoring, wireless LAN, energy
consumption
I. INTRODUCTION
The control of electricity, water or gas consumption is an
essential aspect in business or domestic installations. An
adequate monitoring process allows the detection of possible
leaks, damages, or even of parts of the system that need
maintenance and/or replacement. The combination of
monitoring and control helps to maintain the desired energy
consumption, while achieving substantial economic benefits
[I]. In this work, we present an integrated modular system for
monitoring and control of consumption, focusing in this
implementation, on the specific case of the electric energy.
Besides monitoring, the system provides remote control
functions, such as the disconnection from the electrical
network of the equipment or device that has exceeded a certain
threshold of consumption defined by the user. Both monitoring
and remote control can be performed from any tenninal having
access to Internet as: computer, mobile, tablet, etc., [2], [3].
Although in this paper we focus on a domestic example, the
solution presented here can also be adapted to other situations
as business scenarios where safety requirements and energy
savings are needed. It is, for instance, the case of industrial or
public facilities (such as universities, sports centers, hospitals,
etc.).
During last years, several commercial solutions for
communication medium as Bluetooth or Z-Wave. A different
set of commercial solutions focused on the control of gas or
water flow applications, incorporates GSM or 3G
communications modules.
Regarding communication protocols for automation, the
most popular, among others, are the KNX (by the Konnex
Association) and the Z-Wave, which have presented on the
market many years ago and are considered as well tested
systems. The key difference of the modular system presented
in this paper is the exploitation of WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) as a
compact and cost-effective solution. For the implementation of
the communication link the main advantage of the WiFi
standard is that the system cost is reduced compared to the
solutions presented above. In addition, WiFi is a highly
developed communication standard and it is widely accepted
by the technical community. This fact facilitate the extension
of the system to different applications, with the possibility to
adapt to other sensor types and thus to monitor and control any
type of energy, such as, the flow in pipelines. The WiFi
protocol also offers the possibility of encrypting the data
transmitted between the different modules of the system.
Compared to current commercial solutions we have
achieved a modular and robust open source application based
on low cost hardware, hence providing to the end user a return
on investment in a short period of time.
Moreover, the monitoring and control software managed by
the server hardware is fully independent, so that the user has
the option to use his own personal computer as a server
together with the smart plugs.
Web application
Monltorlns
equipment Router

monitoring and control power consumption have appeared.

Most of these commercial solutions include a wireless Fig. 1. Modules that constitute the monitoring and control system

978-1-4799-3866-7/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE

 Finally, the system has been designed in such a way, so that
the power consumption of the entire set of components is kept
in very low levels. This way the extra energy cost due to use
the monitoring and control system is negligible. This point is
crucial as the aim of implementing this system in any type of
installation is the energy saving and if the components had a
high consumption, the benefits of the monitoring and control
would be diminished by the use of our own system.
This document is organized as follows. In Section 2 we
describe the main modules that constitute the system and
details of the most relevant technical features are presented.
Section 3 focuses on the communication protocol and the
VLAN access configuration. Section 4, describes the user
interface, alarm management and details the communication
with the database. Section 5, illustrates the feasibility of the
project by means of a preliminary economic study. Finally, in
Section 6 the most important conclusions of this project are
presented.
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
Figure I shows the different parts of the proposed system
which allow the monitory and control of the energy
consumption in a pilot housing.
The system consists of a set of smart plugs (monitoring
equipment), which can connect any electrical device with a
European plug type E. These plugs are interconnected by a
private access domestic network to a small computer that
performs the function of the webserver and which stores and
processes the data acquired from the system plug bases. This
server allows the monitor and control of the plug bases of the
proposed system via the Internet. It is connected to a router or
modem that provides the internet connection. The purpose is
that the user could monitor the consumption online and also
remotely control the equipment by disconnecting it from any
Internet-connected device.
For a better understanding, a more detailed description of
the system components is given in the following sections.
A. Smart Plugs
applications, these bases can connect any type of device or
another base with more plugs. As such, be connected.
Examples include the connection of more devices connect
more devices that consume electric energy like electric heaters,
air conditioning equipment, and so on.
Figure 2 shows the different elements of the smart plugs.
These are an AC / DC converter, two cards to monitor the
voltage and the current respectively, a control card and a
communication card.
B. ACIDC Converter
To provide the electronic components with the necessary
levels of voltage, our system includes a two-stage converter,
(see Fig. 4). In the first stage, there is a non-isolated Back
Converter AC/DC that converts the AC voltage from the power
supply to a 5V DC voltage level. The second stage is based on
a DC/DC converter with a ratio of I:I, which ensures electrical
isolation between the magnitudes to be measured and the
control system.
C. Monitoring cards
The monitoring of
the power consumption
is carried out by two
integrated circuits
designed for this
purpose by the
manufacturers Allegro
and Texas Instruments,
for current and for Fig. 3. Smart Plug
voltage measurement,
respectively [4]. The advantage of these circuits is that both
have an electrical isolation between the measured quantity and
the signal transducer, thus avoiding any damage due to
disturbances in the electric line equipment.
The measurement of the voltage levels is performed by the
integrated circuit AMCIIOODUB by means of a resistive
divider connected between the line and the phase of the
voltage. The output of the device is a differential voltage
proportional to the measured variable (see Fig. 6).
The current measurement is based on a Hall effect sensor
embedded the an integrated circuit, ACS712, with a sensitivity
of IOOmV/A.

L N
230V
50Hz

5Vdc 5Vdc 3.3Vdc

Fig. 4. Two-stage AC/DC converter
Fig. 2. Smart plug components

The smart plug includes also a temperature sensor to

The smart plugs are designed to be connected by means of
compensate the error and nonlinearity in the current
European type E connectors. Typically, in domestic

2
measurement. This error will be corrected by the software E. Communication card
control system. The consumption data calculated in the previous section are
Additionally, the smart plug has a photovoltaic cell, sent to a Roving Networks RN-171 model WiFi
allowing us to control the brightness of the room where the communication card in a serial way. This card is responsible
base is located. As such, the smart plug acquires an additional for transmitting the data to the web server on the resident
functionality at a low cost of implementation. Raspberry Pi.
D. Control card
The control card consists of a low-power microcontroller
fabricated by Microchip that incorporates the peripherals
needed for the conversion of the ADC signals. These include
the voltages and currents supplied by the circuits presented in
the previous section. The control system sends to the WiFi
module the obtained and processed data. Since the objective is Fig. 5. Communication card

to track the electricity consumption, the control card samples

the voltage measurements V(n) and current I(n) provided by the The low consumption of the smart plug is partly due to the
monitoring cards and performs the following calculations [5]: 2.4-GHz IEEE 802.11 b / g Tx / Rx channel in the integrated
communication card. Its consumption is: in "sleep mode" 4 uA
1 N as 30 rnA Rx and Tx variable depending on the output power,
Pact;ve = -2:
N n=1
V(n)J(n) (1) with a maximum of 200 rnA.

as active power calculation and

(2)
'5:: -tfffJ-I'v
Paparenl VRMS JRM,
3.3v �
�I
= •

1'29V 2V

for the apparent power evaluation, where the RMS voltage and
current values are defined, respectively, as:
Fig. 6. Voltage measurements by means of Shunt and differential output

(3) To link the data with the web server the microcontroller
must send the following text frame by the communication port:

http://www.webserver.com/ob.php?obvar=value

JRMS
=
The reactive power and the power factor (PF) are also
computed and they are defmed, respectively, as:
Pactive
PF =
Paparenl
In domestic set-ups the power company applies the
prevailing rate on the active power consumed monthly. For this
reason in our system the information transmitted to the server
is the active power.
Using three devices we can measure the electricity
consumption in three-phase installations where power
companies bill on the active power and apply a bonus or
penalty depending on the reactive power consumption. For this
reason we have also included the ability to calculate and
transmit the reactive power.
(4)
where:
• webserver: name of the web server implemented in the
Raspberry Pi.
• obvar: device alias.
• value: energy consumption.
(5)
For instance, in the case of a TV in the dining room which
is consuming 300W, the frame would be:
(6)
http://www.smartmeterupc.com/ob.php?TV=300
III. WIFI COMMUNICAnON SYSTEM
The system smart plugs send and receive signals via WiFi
to/for a small computer that acts as a server, which is within
the same VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) that connects
the bases.
A. Communication server
In the present project the communication server IS
implemented by a Raspberry Pi module, which is a small
computer sufficient enough to execute the functions required
by the server [6]. The functions performed by this server are:

3
web server, database, network interconnection together with so that the user could track online the consumption of each
internal and external networks. specific area.
The operating system in the server is a derived distribution
of Debian called Raspbian [6]. To enable the server to perform IV. USER INTERFACE
the required functions, the following applications are installed In this section, we describe the user interface and we
(see Fig. 7): Server ssmtp as mail server, isc-dhcp-server as comment the most important functions of it.
DHCP server (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), Apache
A. Web page
The programming objective is to create an environment as
friendly as possible so that the end user would not have any
,
, difficulty on interacting with the system.

\1
APPLICATION From the web page, the user is able to monitor the real-time
SERVER
consumption and the history of it. Additionally, entering the
I
, electric operator taxes, the user can see the economic cost in
any time instant.

r.
Moreover, the user is able to turn out the plug base from
any Internet terminal, by only connecting to the URL (Uniform
Smart Meter - ,, --
Archivo Editar Ver Ettadittica Configuraci6n Inicializar Equipo Acerc!!
SMART PLUG MODEM OR
INTERNET
ROUTER
Comedor

Equipos conectados 2

@TV 300 kWh

@ Hi-Fi - 200 kWh

Fig. 7. Implemented applications
Total •____-=� 500 kWh
as web server, MySQL (Structured Query Language) as
database. To interconnect the two latter applications, web
server and database, the programming language PHP Fig. 9. User mterface
(Hypertext Pre-processor) has been chosen.
A MAC (Media Access Control) address is assigned to Resource Locator) which has been predefmed in the
each plug base by which the user may assign a name that application server.
allows the initial system identification as an alias (see Fig. 8). Figure 9 shows the consumption of two devices in the user
For instance, we could identify the TV and the music player interface main application page, which is defmed as Smart
with the aliases, "TV dining room" and "Hi-Fi", so the user Meter.
Identfficador B. Alarm handling
Detectar
The system is capable of handling all types of user-defined
Establecer Alias
alarms. These alarms notify the case of an incident, such as a
Identificado.- IL..
TV", ·",," "'----_________-'
'"
leak.
Descripci6n l
I
todas las naches II Ii!!S 22:30 .
�eIe";si6n de la hablac:i6n de los rTios, progamada para que se apa�
Due to the mail server installed in the main server, the user
I can set his alarms and system warnings to be sent via email if
any incident takes place.
Once notified by e-mail, the user can enable or disable a
Fig. 8. ApplicatIOn to Initialize and Identify each one of the plugs.
socket, either by a maximum consumption threshold defmed in
the database or for some other type of incident observed in the
could easily monitor the consumption of each device that has
system.
been connected to the network (see Fig. 9).
Moreover, the deployment of sensors in the vicinity of the
The combination of all these applications provides an
base, for temperature or lighting, for example, allow the user to
HTML environment friendly to the end user and the work with
detect the ambient temperature of the place where the system is
the entire system for energy monitoring and control is simple
installed and remotely control the air conditioning or the
and easy.
electric heater systems.
B. VLAN Configuration Finally, in the specific area of security, a photovoltaic cell
The different smart plugs bases and the server system can detect the interior lighting and this information can
communication via WiFi form a private virtual local area serve as theft precaution (turning lights on at night in case of
network (VLAN). This solution offers advantages regarding absence), or in the case of a night steal or even if more light
the security and data encryption. Each plug has a code or name, than usual is detected, the system will notify the incident.
and can be configured depending on the area where it is placed

4
C. Data bases • Control of the consumed energy in homes, working
To generate consumption graphs and statistics both online and corporate environments
and historically, the application must access a database. In our • Providing, in a simple and modular way, a detailed
case we have chosen MySQL, where we store all the overview of energy consumption and its evolution over
information supplied by each one of the smart plugs. time, and
The communication between the database and the web • Enabling intelligent management of energy
application is performed using the programming language consumption and saving.
PHP. This ultimate goal, saving energy by households or
Finally, note that for this project an Open Source software corporations involves, on one hand, significant money saving
has been used, which allows the end user (if this is an in these current times of austerity and, on the other hand, a
advanced user) to customize both the environment and the sustainable management of energy resources beneficial to the
management of the database. environment.
Furthermore the proposed system offers a number of
V. SOME RESULTS
additional features such as high systems, distributed control of
Table 1 summarizes the electric consumption of each one temperature and light in a home or a workplace, and the
of the system components. handling of an alarm system with technical failures and/or
intrusion. Also, all these features can be successfully managed
TABLE I. SMART PLUG CONSUMPTION remotely.
Component Description Consumption Finally, it is important to address that the system is
Diode DIODE, STANDARD, lA, lOOOV, 12mW intended to work for different types of energy and several other
SMD applications such as public buildings or water networks. This
DCIDC IC, OFF LINE SWITCHER, 360MA 200mW other applications constitute part of our future work.
converter
IC MAX253 TRANSFORMER DRIVER 25mW ACKNOWLEDGMENT
LDO 3.3V V REG LDO +3.3V, 1117 200mW
ACS712 SENSOR, CURRENT, 20A 65mW The authors would like to thank to Joaquin Fernandez and
MCllOO AMP, ISOLATION, 60KHZ 70mW Josep Pujal, members of the computer services crew of the
18Fl4k50 Microcontroler 8 bits lOOmW Signal Theory and Communications department, for their good
Witt RNl71 Module WiFi 200mW
ideas and approach in this line of work, and also to thank for
Total 870mW
her unconditional support Katerina Koutlia PhD student in the
Department of Signal Theory and Communication. This work
At nominal operating conditions there is a consumption of
has been partially supported by the Spanish M[C[NN project
870MW, which with a guard factor is 1W. The consumption of
TEC2011-25215.
each smart plug must be added to that of the Raspberry Pi
which is 3.5W.
With these data we can estimate our system electricity REFERENCES
consumption in a year for a home with 5 smart plug bases. The
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consumption in kWh in a year in a house with 5 smart plugs 2020. 2° Plan Nacional de Eficiencia Energetica de Espana,
will be: Ministerio de Industria.

[2] Flick T., Morehouse J., (2010) Securing the Smart Grid: Next
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Smart Plug 1 365 24 8.76KWh Grids, CRC Press.
Raspberrv Pi 3. 5 365 24 30.6KWh
[4] Sirohiwala A., (2013), "New approaches to high efficiency
39.36KWh
current sensing: integrated hall sensor IC save power and
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Assuming a price of 0.138658€ per kWh, according to the
[5] Power Integrations, (2004) LNK304-306, Lowest component
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a monthly cost of 0, 14€.
[6] http://www.raspberrypi.org
According to a study reference by the OCU (Spanish
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VI. CONCLUSION
Semiconductor Components Industries.
The idea of this project is to develop a full system with the
following properties: