Smart Energy Meter and load Management System
LoRa based smart energy meter is an effective substitute for conventional smart energy meters that need a working internet connection on-site for their functioning which limits their feasibility, viability, and practicality. Currently, providing a working internet connection at
2025-06-28 16:35:19 - Adil Khan
Smart Energy Meter and load Management System
Project Area of Specialization Internet of ThingsProject SummaryLoRa based smart energy meter is an effective substitute for conventional smart energy meters that need a working internet connection on-site for their functioning which limits their feasibility, viability, and practicality. Currently, providing a working internet connection at the remote locations where the Energy Meters are installed is an extremely costly and difficult task. This limitation of internet accessibility on-site would be eliminated by using the LoRa based Smart Energy Meter. The LoRa based smart energy meter would have two parts i.e. Meter and IOT gateway. The meter part would be implemented on-site and does not need any internet connectivity and the IOT gateway would be mounted inside a control room where internet accessibility would be mandatory. This design allows only a single internet connection to connect all the LoRa based smart energy meters within a 2 - 5 km radius. This makes the Smart energy meter to be implementable in real-life situations, abolishing the need for a separate internet connection for every meter. The smart energy meter would also provide the consumers and the supply companies with a firm grasp over the functionality of the meter.
The smart energy meter would be able to perform autonomous meter reading along with the load management system wherein the most important loads would not be disconnected even in an event of power shortage.
The consumers could also view meter details, generate reports and disconnect the supply to their homes from the user web portal. The power companies could generate bills and maintain the user connections from the admin panel of the web portal.
The LoRa based Smart Energy meter is a complete, efficient and the most feasible option for smart energy meters to be implemented in real-life situations. Thus, it can precisely replace the conventional energy meters along with existing smart energy meters for its futuristic and practical approach.
The working of the Smart Energy Meter could be summarised using the below Figure.
Figure 1.1 Single Control room Approach of The Proposed smart Meter. All meters within 1-5 km radius will need a single wifi connection.
Load Management System:
The proposed Load Management system is an innovative way of managing power shortages throughout the world and especially in our beloved country Pakistan. The proposed load management system works on a very simple principle of disconnecting only the least important loads while keeping the Most important loads connected to the mains supply. This allows for the energy consumers to enjoy the basic necessities of life like ceiling fans, room lights, charging sockets, etc even during the event of power shortage. The heavy loads like freezers, water pumps, washing machines etc which consume the most power from the household yet are not essential to be connected to the mains power throughout the day. The below figure illustrates the concept of the Load Management system.
The main objective of the LoRa based smart energy meter project is to design a feasible, practical and implementable model of smart energy meters that can be implemented in real-world applications. The smart energy meter is proposed to be a complete solution that can cater to the shortcomings of the conventional energy meters as well as existing smart energy meters.
Our LoRa based Smart energy meter is proposed to be an autonomous system that negates the human factor in the complete process of meter reading, calculating bills along with generation and distribution of the bills to the consumers. The smart energy meter would provide both the Electric supply companies as well as the consumer's complete control over their energy meters allowing them to connect or disconnect their power supply to the homes through online portals along with providing the freedom of managing their loads by selection between the Most important loads and the least important loads. Load Management Feature would provide an efficient solution for energy management during the peak hours and for events of power shortage.
Existing smart energy meters are non-feasible and lack the practicality of the devices. For this reason, a lot of work needs to be done in order to make a working prototype of a long-range smart energy meter. The major hurdles include developing a long-range communication protocol using LoRaWan which can perform efficiently during varying weather conditions and densely populated frequency bands in the cities. We would also need to develop a low-cost algorithm to calculate the energy consumed by the users because the existing methods of energy calculation are expensive and cannot be implemented for smart projects because the energy calculated cannot be used with microcontrollers. We would need to design a system that would calculate the energy using a microcontroller which is essential for all other applications
Project Implementation MethodThe implementation of the proposed Smart Energy Meter with Load Management using LoRaWAN protocol would be a very challenging task because we plan to make it a versatile and affordable solution so that it could be implementable in diverse conditions with the minimum installation cost.
We would start the project by first building a working energy meter from scratch. We plan to use an Atmega328P prototype board (Arduino Nano) as the controller for our energy meter. Current and voltage sensing would be carried out using cheap and easily available sensors that would limit the cost of our meter. In order to make our energy meter capable of handling real as well as complex loads with varying power factors we would also calculate the phase difference between the Current and Voltage waveforms. The Phase difference would be calculated by interpolating the waveforms of both current and voltage then measuring the time difference between them. A Real-Time Clock would be interfaced with Arduino Nano to keep a track of the time for making energy calculations. in order to incorporate the load management feature, we would use Solid State relays to control which loads would be connected to the mains supply and which loads would be disconnected. The Relays would be controlled using the Atmega328P mounted on Arduino Nano.
The energy calculations would be done and the readings would then be transmitted to the receiving end of the system (IoT Gateway) mounted 1-5 Km away from the meter. The communication between the two ends would be made possible by using Low power Long Range LoRa devices.
The Data would be encrypted using standard encryption protocols in order to develop a secure connection between the transmitting and receiving ends of the Smart Energy Meter.
The IOT Gateway would consist of a Nodemcu (ESP 8266) and a receiving LoRa device. The IoT Gateway would receive the data from the Meter and upload that data to the online servers.
The Web portal would be developed on PHP using the Laravel and CodeIgniter frameworks which would allow the web portals to update in real-time. The online database would be developed using the MySQL database system.
The sub-systems would be developed and tested individually and then they would be combined into the complete project. The Project would then be finally tested and implemented on a controlled load and Power supply in order to determine the efficiency of the system and thus to make final adjustments if needed.
Benefits of the ProjectThe proposed Smart Energy Meter using LoRaWAN protocol is based on a very realistic approach while being futuristic from the core. Every house, industry, shops, etc need an electric energy meter. This makes our proposed smart energy meter the most efficient and reliable choice for every electric energy consumer which essentially increases the beneficiaries of our Smart energy meter to millions and millions of users across the globe. The Power Consumers could use The Smart Energy meter for keeping a track of their energy consumption from anywhere in the world using the user portal. The Power companies could use the Smart energy meter to manage, monitor and control their users using a single web portal without any hassle of meter reading, On-site connection management, fault detection and many other advantages over traditional energy meters.
The Power companies could implement the Load management system to manage the power needs during energy shortage and peak hours by managing the loads based on their importance. The load management feature would enable the supply companies and users to keep their most important loads working even during the power shortage.
The smart energy meter could become the go-to choice of for the Third-party contract-based companies providing the Electric power utility to industries and small scale manufacturing plants only for emergency situations. Such contract-based companies need a detailed calculation of the amount of electric energy being sold and the remote monitoring and control of the power supply. So, in short, the Smart Energy Meter using LoRaWAN protocol could become the choice of millions and millions of users across the world.
Technical Details of Final DeliverableThe final Deliverables would consist of a Hardware cum Software integrated system. The hardware part would consist of two parts ie Meter and the IoT gateway. The Meter would be implemented on-site while it would not need any sort of internet connection. The IoT gateway would be mounted at a place where internet connectivity would be necessary. The two parts could be mounted as far away as 1-5 Km. The Smart Energy meter would be able to measure the energy consumed by any type of load with varying power factors. The Smart Energy Meters would be enclosed in a sealed box so that the meter could be implemented outdoors and sustain harsh weather conditions.
The System would be designed for a 220V 60HZ power supply. The Smart Energy Meter could also be altered in order to make it compatible with other energy levels being used in other parts of the world.
The final deliverable would also include a Complete Web Portal with two panels’ i.e user panel and admin panel. The admin panel would contain a complete database of all the users connected to the system. The admin would be able to control the meter connections, get meter readings, implement energy shortage hours, and manage heavy loads and many other authorities. The user panel would contain limited access to the meter. The user panel would allow the users to control their meter connection by switching OFF or turning ON the electricity connection to their homes. The user panel would also allow the users to view their energy consumption, meter reading and electricity bill, etc.
The Maximum distance between the Energy Meter and the IoT gateway rural areas with line of sight connection between the two ends could reach up to 5–7 Km radius. In Urban areas with densely populated frequency bands and obstacles like buildings and other structures would limit the range of communication between the Energy Meter and the iot Gateway. In urban areas, the range may drop as low as 1-2 km radius. The Design would equip with an Antenna to increase the range of communication.
| Item Name | Type | No. of Units | Per Unit Cost (in Rs) | Total (in Rs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total in (Rs) | 52440 | |||
| ESP 32 | Equipment | 2 | 770 | 1540 |
| SX-1278 LoRa | Equipment | 4 | 900 | 3600 |
| Arduino | Equipment | 2 | 480 | 960 |
| 0.91 inch OLED display | Equipment | 2 | 550 | 1100 |
| Power supply for meter | Equipment | 4 | 500 | 2000 |
| ZMPT101B Ac voltage sensor | Equipment | 2 | 500 | 1000 |
| 220v Ac Electric Motor single phase | Equipment | 1 | 10000 | 10000 |
| 220v Ac - 12v Ac zero phase difference adapter | Equipment | 2 | 3000 | 6000 |
| SCT013 current sensor (30A) | Equipment | 2 | 1200 | 2400 |
| Circuit Breaker (20A) | Equipment | 2 | 620 | 1240 |
| Solder Iron and Wire | Equipment | 1 | 350 | 350 |
| Cables for connection with the mains and load | Equipment | 1 | 2000 | 2000 |
| Connectors | Equipment | 1 | 2000 | 2000 |
| Domain Registration | Miscellaneous | 1 | 800 | 800 |
| Web Hostiong for atleast six months | Miscellaneous | 1 | 6000 | 6000 |
| Wifi Router | Equipment | 1 | 1450 | 1450 |
| Prototype Board and Display | Equipment | 1 | 2000 | 2000 |
| Casing and meter Boxing | Equipment | 4 | 1750 | 7000 |
| Final report printing and Binding etc | Miscellaneous | 1 | 1000 | 1000 |