Electricity Theft Detection using Smart Energy Meters

Project Title

Electricity Theft Detection using Smart Energy Meters

Project Area of Specialization Electrical/Electronic EngineeringProject Summary

In the modern era of life, electricity plays a main role in the progress of the world. As electricity could be used more efficiently by monitoring and controlling the quality of power in remote as well as urban areas. Electricity theft being happening in the world by different means such as by hooking or bypassing. In Pakistan, Electricity theft is the main concern in traditional power system that eventually results in the downfall of the country’s economy. A Wi-Fi communication protocol is used in this project to send/receive data and to notify the utility companies about the electricity theft area timely. With the help of consumer’s data transferred by means of Wi-Fi a high probability of electricity theft could be short listed.  An Arduino microcontroller used here to control the data collection of power delivered, consumed and compare the respective values for marginal difference between these values to detect electricity theft. This eventually reduce the regular physical inspection for electricity theft detection and enhance the life time of a transformer by regularly monitoring for overload condition due to electricity theft.

Project Objectives

The objective of this project is to:

Localize electricity theft area.

Project Implementation Method

In order to detect electricity theft, the power delivered by the transformer and power consumed by each consumer are being measured. By comparing these respective values it is easy to decide either there is any abnormal value (electricity theft) or not. For the measurement of power, voltage, current and power factor are the key elements to be measured. The consumer’s data will be sent to transformer’s control center through Wi-Fi technology where it compares consumer power profiles with delivered power and decide whether there is a significant difference in transformer delivered and customer’s consumed power. Whenever there is a significant difference, it sends report to main control center using Wi-Fi technology.

The advantage of above method over previously proposed solution is, it is efficient and fast because it doesn’t put much load of calculation on main control center. The calculation is divided among each transformer according to number of consumers connected across that transformer. The main control center only receives the reports send by transformer due to significant difference.

Benefits of the Project

The benefits of this project are:

1. Notifies utility about electricity theft timely.
2. Aids to find out illegal consumer by localizing electricity theft area.
3. Helps utilities to minimize expenditure on expensive regular physical monitoring for electricity theft detection.
4. Increases transformer life as regularly monitoring for over load.
5. Minimize burden on all customer.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

In this project electrical power will be measured, campared by using arduino mega and result will be transferred using wifi technology to monitor for electricity theft more efficiently and effectively.

Final Deliverable of the Project Hardware SystemCore Industry Energy Other Industries Telecommunication Core Technology Internet of Things (IoT)Other TechnologiesSustainable Development Goals Affordable and Clean EnergyRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	17060
Arduino Mega	Equipment	1	3000	3000
Wi-Fi module	Equipment	1	250	250
LCD display	Equipment	2	800	1600
current transformer	Equipment	4	300	1200
transformer stepdown	Equipment	2	350	700
volatge regulator	Equipment	2	15	30
opto coupler	Equipment	4	20	80
connection wires	Equipment	100	2	200
structure	Miscellaneous	1	5000	5000
transportation	Miscellaneous	1	5000	5000