Wireless Home Energy Meter Manager using Android: A Preliminary study

Abstract

Manual home energy meter reading and billing had caused inconvenience to the utility companies due to lack of manpower to read the energy meter at each household especially in the remote area, explains the increasing number of smart meter reader in the current market. Most of the smart meters in the market do not offer safety of privacy of consumers’ personal information since the data of electricity usage is being transferred digitally to the utility companies for more accurate bills calculation. Plus, the smart meter system is also a bit pricey to be installed in the rural area. Therefore, a private system that able to read energy consumption from a DC load and calculate its bill according to the tariff is proposed. Value of current is being obtained by using ACS712 current sensor. Hall circuit in the current sensor will converts magnetic field into a proportional voltage. The proposed system allows energy meter monitoring from an Android-based smartphone by displaying the real-time energy consumption and bill on Blynk application. An interface of Blynk is developed and connected to WiFi module, ESP8266 for visualizing the energy consumption of the DC load. In conclusion, the Energy Meter transmitter part able to read, calculate and transmit value of energy consumption and current bills to the Blynk application and Blynk application able to receive and show all the data transmitted at the present time. This system will be further improved for long-distance monitoring of electrical appliances used at home.