Design and implementation of smart energy meter

Electricity is one of the fundamental necessities of human beings, which is commonly used for domestic, industrial and agricultural purposes. Power theft is the biggest problem in recent days which causes lot of loss to electricity boards. In countries like India, these situations are more often. If we can prevent these thefts we can save lot of power. This is done using Smart Energy Meter (SEM). SEM is an electric device having energy meter chip for measuring the electric energy consumed and a wireless protocol for data communication. This paper presents a smart energy meter for an automatic metering and billing system. In this meter energy utilized and the corresponding amount will be displayed on the LCD continuously and communicated to the controlling base station. The feedback from the user helps in identifying the usages between authorized and unauthorized users which helps in controlling the power theft. Communication between user/household and substation is done using Zigbee. GSM network is used for sending SMS to the local authorities regarding the theft cases. This meter can work as either prepaid or post-paid meter. The proposed system replaces traditional meter reading methods and enables remote access of existing energy meter by the energy provider. Also they can monitor the meter readings regularly without the person visiting each house.