Three Phase Enhanced Electrical Energy Metering System

Abstract

This paper presents a practical solution for two existing problems in traditional electrical energy measurements. The first problem is the manual electrical billing system; so far, some countries are still adopting a manual technique with a high percentage of human errors and much complains from the consumers’ side and a lot of work from the authorities’ side. The second problem is having a low power factor at most of the domestic loads and some main commercial ones. Low power factor causes more current to flow in the network leading to an overheating of transformers and cables, and an increase of the core losses of transformers; in addition, less power factor means more burned fuel and more environment pollution. In This study, an automated solution for both problems is introduced, where two control units are added to the already existing three phase energy meters. The first unit solves the problem of manual billing by automatically calculating the monthly bill and sending monthly SMS messages to the consumers as well as authorities. The second unit solves the problem of low power factor by injecting reactive power using capacitor bank at the end load points to maintain a power factor of 0.95 at all load cases. A penalty will be added to the monthly calculated bill once the above value is violated. A prototype was implemented proving the capability of introducing both solutions using existing meters with a reasonable added cost