Development of an SMS-Based Prepayment Energy Meter Monitoring System for Consumers and Utility Companies

Abstract

In this paper, a Short Message Service (SMS) Based Prepayment Energy Meter Monitoring System for Consumers and Utility Companies is developed. This is borne out of the desire of consumers to be able to monitor their meters especially their consumption. Also, the utility companies need to be able to monitor energy meters wirelessly especially for energy auditing and other control as may be needed. The Energy Meter consists of ADE7755 for consumption pulse measurement which is recorded by arduino Atmega328P. The recorded pulses are sent to Atmega2560, the main controller of the system on its request for update every second. This controller also manages unit according to consumption and other activities of the meter. It is made SMS capable by interfacing Atmega2560 with SIM900 Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) module. The system also has a server consisting of Atmega328P and SIM900 GSM module that enables the utility company to access the meter. The server is interfaced to a PC which is used for management and administrative Platform. The SMS communication command is developed in C++ to achieve the monitoring functionality of the metering system. The SMS duration test shows a mean time of 32.7s with a standard deviation of 13.71. The SMS Command Reliability Test carried out shows a success rate as high as 100% and the highest failure rate of 5.88%. The results obtained show that GSM-Based SMS is a good platform for energy meter monitoring.