Microprocessor Based System Design of Remote Power Billing

Motivation

    The current system of billing electricity employs a rather tedious method of noting the power readings. In addition to being tedious, the method is flawed with respect to the authenticity of the reading, as the reading itself can be manipulated.
    Furthermore, noting the reading is done by a public official , who might be tempted to note inaccurate data ,if offered the right incentives. Wrong readings result in wrong billing, and this may lead to public dissatisfaction. A lot of space is used in storing the records and the task of manually maintaining a database is mundane.

Objective

    To facilitate billing of electric meters, so that the readings are both accurate and secure, leading to an automatic storage of the records.

Overview

    Each of the meters will communicate with a central device, thereby updating the readings. The bill will be calculated based on the reading of the individual meter.
    The task can be broken up into the following modules:

Protocol Definition

Our design will have two levels. One level includes the communication between the micro-processor and the PC. The other level looks into the issue of wireless communication.

Design of the Server Software

The design of the server software involves polling the serial port, calculating the bill and regular updating and maintenance of the database.

Micro controller programming for computation

Micro controller design for the meter interface to communication medium.

Interfacing with the actual meter

We can take a two approaches in this problem. One, we can sample the current and voltage values regularly and then we could generate digital signals based on this sampling. In the other method we could hook up a conventional meter and count the number of revolutions and then calculate the energy consumed.

Wireless Communication

We will read the meter reading remotely using wireless communication and the server will poll for the current meter reading .
 

Report
 
Nitin Suri & Saket Prasad Thakur / Dept. Computer Science and Engineering / IIT Delhi / Hauz Khas/ New Delhi 110016 /