WIRELESS ENERGY METER WITH THEFT DETECTION SYSTEM

Commercial or in other words non-technical losses account for more than 1% of electricity use around the world. The dominant component of these losses is electricity theft. In the largest extent, electricity theft is a problem related to residential customers. In some countries, electricity theft is in the range of, or far exceeding, technical losses in the transmission and distribution sector. Amounts of unbilled (also called non-invoiced) electricity may completely disturb the normal process of incentive regulation of electrical distribution companies (later referred to as utilities). It is also a moral problem that the energy conservation efforts of one group of people are wasted by others. In several countries, such as India, theft of electricity has some kind of endemic character. I heard a story from India; it was about the failure of the meter and the whole power panel. It took some time for the utility staff to come and check, and finally they could not restore supply thru mater so made a temporary connection bypassing the meter, which remained that way for a very long time. So, quite often, ensuring continuity of supply at the level which would be completely unsatisfactory in the developed world is still much better than the local average and is an excuse to bypass a meter.

Another reason for electricity theft is lack of connection to the grid. This may often happen in slums and generally in poor countries, but also in rural areas where temporary connections to overhead lines are made for a number of strange purposes (camping, forestry jobs, exploration and so on).

It may also happen that the supply had been stopped by utilities because of previous electricity theft and the victim cannot live without electricity, but equally cannot pay for it. In such a case, the country's wealth is not a factor.

Industries are implementing automation within a blink of eye. Automation through innovative ways are always accepted everywhere. Nowadays, KSEB appointing persons to read the energy consumption of consumers. This results excess wastage of money and human effort. In order to provide a solution for this wireless transmission of energy meter reading and reduce electricity theft, we propose an embedded system.

BLOCK DIAGRAM
CONSUMER SIDE
COMPARATOR

MICRO CONTROLLER

ZIGBEE

ENERGY METER

LCD

ELECTRIC POLE SIDE

COMPARATOR

MICRO CONTROLLER

ZIGBEE

ENERGY METER

LCD

KSEB SIDE

ZIGBEE

PC

WORKING OF THE CIRCUIT

CONSUMER PART The circuit consists of an energy meter, a microcontroller and a communication module. An electric meter or energy meter is a device that measures the amount of electrical energy supplied to or produced by a residence, business or machine. The most common type is a kilowatt hour meter. When used in electricity retailing, the utilities record the values measured by these meters to generate an invoice for the electricity. They may also record other variables including the time when the electricity was used. Modern electricity meters operate by continuously measuring the instantaneous voltage (volts) and current (amperes) and finding the product of these to give instantaneous electrical power (watts) which is then integrated against time to give energy used (joules, kilowatt-hours etc). An opto coupler is connected in between the energy meter and MCU. It consists of an input LED and output transistor. As the two are electrically isolated, this gives a fair amount of flexibility when it comes to connecting them into circuit. All we really have to do is work out a convenient way of turning the input LED on and off, and using the resulting switching of the phototransistor to generate an output waveform or logic. The collector pin of the transistor is connected to the microcontroller. The microcontroller then counts the pulses. The microcontroller will transmit the current meter reading whenever demanded by the authority. At the KSEB side, there should be another communication module to demand the meter reading .

ELECTRIC POLE PART At the pole side, same set up is implemented. The distribution to the customers is from pole. The total consumption of all consumers is recorded in the meter at the pole side. The communication module at the pole always receives the reading of consumer. Whenever a consumer tries to commit energy theft, the microcontroller at the consumer side sends the same reading always. But the reading of the pole increases as per consumption. A communication module is connected to the microcontroller to transfer the data. If the microcontroller at the pole gets different readings from pole side meter and consumer meter then microcontroller sends the report to the remote section. For this purpose zigbee is connected to the microcontroller at the pole side.. It communicates on USART protocol. The communication is performed at a data rate of 9600bps.