© April 2018 | IJIRT | Volume 4 Issue 11 | ISSN: 2349-6002
Prepaid Energy Meter for Billing System Using
Microcontroller and Dongle
Yogesh Gupta1,Sawan Kumar Sharma2
Student, Department of Electrical & Electronic, PSIT,Kanpur,UP(India)
2
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical & Electronic, PSIT,Kanpur,UP(India)
1
Abstract- In this paper, the idea of a Prepaid energy meter
using a PIC16F73 microcontroller has been introduced.
This concept provides a cost efficient manner of electricity
billing. The present energy billing systems are discrete,
inaccurate, costly and slow. They are also time and labour
consuming. The major drawback of traditional billing
system is power and energy theft. This drawback is reduced
by using a prepaid energy meter which is based on the
concept “Pay first and then use it”. Prepaid energy meter
also reduces the error made by humans while taking
readings to a large extent and there is no need to take
reading in it. The prepaid energy meter uses a recharge card
which is available in various ranges (i.e. Rs. 50, Rs. 100, Rs.
200, etc.). The recharge is done by using a keypad and the
meter is charged with the amount. According to the power
consumption, the amount will be reduced. An LDR (light
Dependant Resistor) circuit counts the amount of energy
consumed and displays the remaining amount of on the
LCD. A relay system has been used which shut down or
disconnect the energy meter and load through supply mains
when the recharge amount is depleted. A buzzer is used as
an alarm which starts before the recharge amount reaches a
minimum value.
Index Terms- PIC6F73 microcontroller, EEPROM
microcontroller, voltage regulator, 16*2 LCD display, relay,
LDR, energy meter.
I.
INTODUCTION
The present traditional billing system have many
problems like problem of payment collection, energy
thefts etc. due to which the traditional billing system is
slow, costly and unreliable. The present billing system has
chances of error and it is also time or labour consuming.
A paper suggests a design of digital energy meter for
improved metering and billing system. Poly-phase
prepaid energy metering system has also been proposed
and developed based on local prepayment and card
reader. Another paper suggests prepaid energy mater
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using a microcontroller from microchip technology Inc
PIC family, used due to low cost of microcontrollers. So it
is essential to develop a billing system which solves the
problem of billing manually and also reduces the
manpower.
In this paper we proposed and designed a
prepaid energy meter using two microcontrollers
PIC16F73 and EEPROM from ATMEL family. The
reason for using these microcontrollers is its high
performance, power efficiency or design flexibility etc. In
this paper, a recharge card is used which is available in
various ranges (i.e. Rs. 50, Rs. 100, Rs. 20 etc.)
consumer buys a recharge card for Rs. 50 he/she can
insert this amount through the keypad so that the prepaid
energy meter will be activated. According to the power
consumption the amount will be reduced.
An LDR circuit is used to count the amount
of energy consumed and an LCD is used to display the
meter readings. When the recharge card amount is nil the
relay will automatically shut down the whole system. In
this project we also have provision to give an alarm sound
using buzzer to the consumer before the whole amount is
depleted.
II. PREPAID ENERGY METER
Prepaid energy meter is technique which is cost efficient
and can reduce problems associated with billing and also
reduces deployment of manpower for taking meter
readings. Prepaid energy meter has many advantages both
from suppliers as well as consumer’s point as follows:-
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© April 2018 | IJIRT | Volume 4 Issue 11 | ISSN: 2349-6002
Why Prepayment – From supplier point of view?
Pay before use
Keep customers on supply
Lower overhead
No bill production
No bill distribution
No need to chase payments
No further actions such as disconnections
Social acceptability
Customer responsible for disconnection
Load and demand side management
Load based
Time based
Why Prepayment – From Customer point of
view?
>80% mobile phones used in India are prepaid
Flexible payment solution
Pay to suit your income status
Daily, weekly , monthly budgeting
Show true cost of consumption and money left
Reduce consumption when income is tight
Reduce waste – conserve energy
No bills
No billing errors
No socially unacceptable disconnections.
A. Block Diagram of Prepaid Energy Meter
The block diagram of prepaid energy meter is shown in
fig. (ii). It consist of microcontroller AT89S52, buzzer,
keypad, relay, single phase energy meter, IC AT24C02
which is an EEPROM and has volatilememory, IC
ULN2003 is a high voltage/ high current Darlington array
each contains seven open collector Darlington pairs with
common emitters used to drive loads.
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Fig(i)Block Diagram.
B. Circuit Description and working
The circuit diagram of prepaid energy meter contains two
parts (a) energy meter circuit (Fig. iv) (b) LDR circuit
(Fig. iii).
(a) Energy Meter Circuit
The circuit diagram of energy meter circuit is shown in
fig. (iii). A 230 V A.C – 12 V D.C step down transformer
is used as power supply. The rectifier circuit is used to
convert A.C into D.C. at the output of rectifier circuit
+12V power supply is generated. The IC 7805 is a voltage
regulator which is a 3 pin IC and is used to convert +12V
into +5V. Now in our project where we need +5V supply
we take it from output of IC7805 and where we required
+12V supply we take from the input of IC7805. When the
microcontroller AT89S52[10] which is a 40 pin IC gets
signals first of all we insert the recharge number using the
keypad. The recharge unit is stored in IC AT24C02 which
is an EEPROM and has volatile memory and this recharge
unit is display in Liquid
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN TECHNOLOGY
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© April 2018 | IJIRT | Volume 4 Issue 11 | ISSN: 2349-6002
Crystal display (LCD) and a message “recharge
successful” also displays. The IC ULN2003 is a high
voltage/ high current Darlington array containing seven
open collector Darlington pairs with common emitters
used to drive loads. Since the current produced by the
microcontroller is only 10 mA which is very low to drive
a relay that is why we are using ULN2003[11] which
converts 10 mA into 80 mA and the relay is switched ON.
As the power is consumed the reading in the single phase
energy meter(connected across X2-1 and X2-2) is
increased and the units in LCD is decreased by
Rs.1.When the balance reaches to Rs.10 then the buzzer
starts indicating that we should recharge our meter soon.
And if balance is nil then the relay is switched off and no
electricity flows.
(b) LDR Circuit
LDRs or Light Dependent Resistors are very useful
especially in light/dark sensor circuits. Normally the
resistance of an LDR is very high, sometimes as high as
10 MΩ, but when they are illuminated with light
resistance drops dramatically. When the light level is low
the resistance of the LDR is high. This prevents current
from flowing to the 555 timer. Consequently the LED
does not light. However, when light shines onto the LDR
its resistance falls and current flows into the 555 timer
and the LED lights. LDR Circuit is used to count the unit
pulses. When the LED blinks for 10 time it counts the
energy unit as 1. This will show in LCD of the main
circuit and the recharge amount in the LCD is decreased
by Rs.1.
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Fig.(ii) LDR Circuit
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN TECHNOLOGY
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© April 2018 | IJIRT | Volume 4 Issue 11 | ISSN: 2349-6002
Fig(iii)Prepaid energy meter
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© April 2018 | IJIRT | Volume 4 Issue 11 | ISSN: 2349-6002
Fig(iv).Recharge Uni
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© April 2018 | IJIRT | Volume 4 Issue 11 | ISSN: 2349-6002
C. Software development for prepaid energy meter
The system software is implemented by C
language and the developed code is edited, compiled and
debugging by Win-AVR software. We can also program
the system using MATLAB.
D. Energy calculation
Energy is the measure of how much work has been
required over a known period of time. We are using a
light bulb as a load with a 100W rating which consumes
100 watts of active power in order to create light (and
heat). First of all a wattmeter is used to measure the
power consumed by the load by using the equation. The
frequency across 100 W load obtained during an
experiment is
F= 0.5 Hz
And P = 100*X/0.5
P = 200*X
Where X is the frequency of pulses that is produced
by the energy meter.
1 watt sec = 1 kW sec/1000
1 watt sec = 1 kWh/ (1000*3600)
Therefore Energy = P * Sec/ (1000*3600)
3.
4.
deployment of manpower for taking meter
readings.
Prepaid energy meter is more reliable and
user friendly.
From all these we can conclude that if we implement this
prepaid energy meter then it can become more beneficial.
REFERENCES
[1] Devidas, A.R., Ramesh, M.V. “Wireless Smart Grid
Design for Monitoring and Optimizing Electric
Transmission in India,” 2010 Fourth International
Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications
(SENSORCOMM),” pp.637-640, 2010
[2] Md. Mejbaul Haque “Microcontroller Based Single
Phase Digital Prepaid Energy Meter for Improved
Metering” International Journal of Power Electronics and
Drive System (IJPEDS) December
2011, pp. 139~147
[3] Ling Zou, Sihong Chu and Biao Guo.,“The
Design of Prepayment Polyphase Smart Electricity Meter
System,” International Conference on Intelligent
Computing and Integrated Systems (ICISS), pp. 430-432,
22-24, Dec 2010.
III. RESULT
[4] Loss, P et al., “A Single Phase Microcontroller Based
The energy meter was tested by using an electric light
Energy Meter,” IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement
bulb of 100 watts that draws current up to A. The supply
Technology Conference. St. Paul Minnesota, USA, May
voltage was 230 V. First of all a wattmeter was used to
18-21, 1998
measure the power consumed by the load. Then energy
[5] Prepaid Energy Meter (AT89S52) 8051
consumption was measured after every 10 seconds. Total
Microcontroller
indianengineer.
5 pulses occurred at every 10
wordpress.com/.../prepaid-energy-meter at89s52.
seconds in energy meter. The computed energy
[6] Prepaid Energy Meter (AT89S52) 8051
consumption is read from the LCD. The result is shown in
Microcontroller
indianengineer.
Table 1. The test was done over a 2 minute period and
wordpress.com/.../prepaid-energy-meter at89s52.
measurements were taken every 10 seconds.
[7] Mazidi. Mohammed Ali and Janice Gillespie Mazidi.
“The 8051 microcontroller
IV. CONCLUSION
and embedded systems”, second edition, Prentice Hall
The paper is intended to present an overview of prepaid
Publications, 1999.
energy meter, which can control the usage of electricity
[8] Irfan Quazi, Sachin Kumar Gupta, Rajendra Prasad,
on consumer side to avoid wastage of power. Prepaid
“Pre-paid Energy Meter based on AVR Microcontroller /
energy meter is a concept to minimize the Electricity theft
International Journal of Engineering Research and
with a cost efficient manner.
Applications (IJERA)
1. The users are not bound to pay excesses amount
[9] Atmel Corporation - Atmel AT89S52 8- and 32- bit
of money, users have to pay according to their
Microcontrollers
requirement.
http://www.atmel.com/products/AT89S52/
2. It can reduce problems associated with billing
[12] Atmel AT89S52 Data Sheet
consumers living in isolated areas and reduce
http://www.keil.com/dd/docs/datashts/atmel/at89s52_
ds.pdf
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© April 2018 | IJIRT | Volume 4 Issue 11 | ISSN: 2349-6002
[10] Amit Jain1, Mohnish Bagree 2,“A prepaid meter
using mobile communication” 1Power Systems Research
Center, International Institute of Information Technology,
Hyderabad, INDIA. 2School of Electrical Engineering,
Vellore Institute
of Technology, Vellore, INDIA
[11] “Let Us C” by Yashwant Kanetkar.
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