Electricity Theft Control using Smart Card

The electricity theft has appeared as a major problem in power divisions in particular in the expanding countries. A vast amount of income is lost due to this theft. In some nations this is so strict that governments are acquiring losses instead of income. In some cases government has to supply subsidies to the power division to keep a reasonable price of power. The economic loss results in lack of funds for savings to develop the existing capacity of electricity.

As a result government has not succeeded to assure the ever rising demand of electricity. Robbery electricity, avoiding a meter, billing wrongdoings and not paid bills. Billing irregularity comprises wrong meter reading taken by bribed service man. Different technical and non technical techniques were projected in the past to notice electricity stealing. Some of the technical methods to identify pilferage are utilize of central observer meter on harmonic generator, secondary terminals of distribution transformer, extreme learning machine, genetic support vector machines & a power line impedance technique.

Controlling of Electricity Theft Using Smart Prepaid Energy Meter

The block diagram of this project mainly includes power supply unit, a Microcontroller, smart card reader, energy meter, buzzer, relay, LCD, smart and LED indicators. The internal non-volatile memory of the Microcontroller is used to store the consumed electricity. The prepaid amount is stored within the memory of the Smartcard. Whenever the amount in the smart card becomes zero on power consumption, the Microcontroller turn offs all the loads by generating a buzzer sound. The consumer has to renew the same Smartcard for further usage of power

The proposed system is inbuilt with a power supply unit, a Microcontroller, smart energy meter, smart card, GSM modem and LCD.

A Smart Card Based Prepaid Electricity System

Microcontroller

A Microcontroller is a programmable device that includes a microprocessor, memory, I/O ports, etc., which can be evaluated with the microcomputer. It is a single chip computer and is a low cost programmable device. It is used where an automatic control is required. To know more about this, please refer the link: 8051 Microcontroller Architecture and Its Applications

8051 Microcontroller

Smart Card

A smart card is a one type of integrated circuit card (ICC) and it is a pocket-sized small card with fixed integrated circuits. The smart card is made with a plastic card with a credit card size with an embedded chip that can be loaded with information. The applications of smart card include in telephone calling, electronic cash payments, etc. To know more about this, please refer the link: What is Smart Card Authentication and Its Applications

S1mart Card

Electromagnetic Relay

The relay board includes three SPDT relays & a ULN 2803relay driver. This is a unipolar relay driver IC with max 50V o/p voltage and 500mA output current. It comprises of an eight Darlington pair transistors, which have a peak rating of 600mA and can hold up 50V in off-state. O/ps may be paralleled for high current capacity.

Electromagnetic Relay

Smart Energy Meter

Smart energy meters go a step advance than simple automatic meter reading. They give an extra functionality with a real-time or near real-time reads, monitoring the power quality and power outage notification. They permit price setting agencies to initiate different prices for utilization based on the season and time of day. Please refer the link for: Wireless Energy Meter

Smart Energy Meter

Liquid Crystal Display

The LCD is chosen as a display device compared to light emitting diode (LED) because of flexibility in display content, lower power consumption and compact structure appropriate for inserting in the hardware unit. The working principle of an LCD is, change in direction of the liquid crystals due to incident light.

Liquid Crystal Display

GSM Module

The term GSM stands for global system for mobile communications is a digital wireless n/w standard designed by standardization teams from major European telecommunications workers and designers. This modem provides a common set of well-suited services and potentials to all gadget users across the country and worldwide. The basic supplies of GSM have five aspects, namely; services, security and quality of services, RF utilization, network and cost.

GSM Modem

Project Working

In this project, the energy value keeps a server and each user are supplied an energy meter. This energy meter includes an ARM7 microcontroller, LCD display, GSM module, potential transformers, current transformers and a relay. The Microcontroller estimates the consumption of an energy by counting the o/p of current & potential transformers on the basis of an interrupt. Then the household meter obtains the equivalent unit and is triggered.

As the consumer uses energy, the equivalent units are removed from the whole balance and the residual units are displayed using the LCD. After the utilization of the owed energy, the energy meter automatically detaches the load from the main power line using the relay until the consumer recharges again. Thus the system avoids the irregularities connected with the traditional billing system and guarantee revenue collection.

Thus, this is all about controlling of electricity theft, using smart prepaid energy meter. Furthermore, any queries regarding this concept or to know more about three energy meters, please give your valuable suggestions by commenting in the comment section below. Here is a question for you, what are the applications of energy meter?