LoRa base smart energy meter with load management.

Project Title

LoRa base smart energy meter with load management.

Project Area of Specialization Electrical/Electronic EngineeringProject Summary

Long Range smart energy meter is an effective substitute of conventional smart energy meters that need a working internet connection on-site which limits the feasibility, viability and practicality of conventional smart energy meters. The LoRa based  smart energy meter would have two parts i.e Meter and IOT gateway. The meter 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 long range smart energy meters within a 5 km – 10 km radius. This makes the Smart energy meter to be implementable in real life situations, abolishing the need of 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 load management system wherein the most important loads would not be disconnected even in an event of power shortage. The consumers could view meter details, generate reports and disconnect the supply to their homes from the user web portal. The Long Range Smart Energy meter is a complete, efficient and the only feasible option for smart energy meters to be implemented in real life situations thus it can precisely replace the conventional energy meters along with smart energy meters for its futuristic and practical approach.

Project Objectives

The main objective of the smart energy meter project is to design a feasible, practical and an implementable model of smart energy meters that can be implemented in the real world applications. The smart energy meter is proposed to be a complete solution that can cater the shortcomings of the conventional energy meters as well as existing smart energy meters. Our Long range energy meter is proposed to be an autonomous system which 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 consumers a 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 which would provide an efficient solution for the 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.
The final deliverables of the smart energy meter would be two working prototypes of the complete smart energy meter along with an admin panel and a user panel for each meter. The prototypes would be tested using both resistive and complex rated load. 

Project Implementation Method

The digital implementation caused the rapid

utilization of devices such as computers and

telecommunication devices. Communication media like

the internet, GSM networks, Zigbee exists everywhere.

SEM puts more control into the hands of consumers by

giving them more detailed information about power

consumption. That information is sent to the base station

regularly using Zigbee and in case of power theft an

SMS is sent to local operator from base station using

GSM. As there is no human intervention in the entire

process, there is no chance of human error and

corruption.

Benefits of the Project

1. Consumers can be informed remotely (historical data) or locally (real-time data) on:
   • Energy costs and
   • Related carbon emission data
2. Energy consumption of household gas, electrical and water equipment can be displayed on the appliance or on displays
3. Multi tariff functions can be added to allow demand response techniques
4. Allowing electrical appliances to be automatically controlled or
5. Allowing the consumer to reduce costs by increasing energy consumption during off-peak cheaper tariff periods.

The smart meter is an enabler for energy management: empowering consumers to save and manage their energy consumption! 

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Single phase smart energy meter could be 
upgraded for three phase system. 
? Online billing system could be implemented 
in this. 
? Mobile app could be developed which links 
the meters and user could view all the details 
and parameters on the app.
? User profile could be created on the web 
portal which displays parameters like Voltage, 
Current, Energy, Power Factor, Billing 
information, Tampering information. 
? All smart meters could be linked together 
through a central networking hub such that the 
accumulative incoming and outgoing power
consumption could be tracked down.

Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry Energy Other Industries Petroleum Core Technology Internet of Things (IoT)Other Technologies OthersSustainable Development Goals Affordable and Clean Energy, Responsible Consumption and ProductionRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	49540
ESP32	Equipment	2	1200	2400
SX1278 LoRa module	Equipment	2	1750	3500
Arduino Nano	Equipment	2	450	900
Casing and meter boxing	Equipment	2	2500	5000
Wifi router	Equipment	1	5000	5000
0.91 inch OLED display	Equipment	2	550	1100
Electric motor single phase 220v AC	Equipment	1	10000	10000
220v AC - 12v AC adaptor	Equipment	2	3000	6000
Power supplies for meters	Equipment	2	500	1000
SCT013 current sensor (30A)	Equipment	2	1200	2400
Prototype board and display	Equipment	1	2000	2000
Web hosting	Miscellaneous	1	6000	6000
Cables	Equipment	1	2000	2000
Circuit breaker	Equipment	2	620	1240
Connectors	Equipment	1	1000	1000