Integrated Electricity Meter And Cost Calculator.

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PROJECT TITLE

INTEGRATED ELECTRICITY METER AND COST CALCULATOR

MUHAMMAD THORIQ BIN MOHAMAD ZAID

This report is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of Bachelor of Electronics Engineering (Industrial Electronics) With Honours.

Faculty of Electronic and Computer Engineering Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka

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DEDICATION

Dedicated in thankful appreciation to my parents, siblings, colleagues and friends for

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Alhamdulillah, In the name of Allah Most Mighty annd Most Merciful Peace

and Blessing be upon His Prophet Muhammd S.A.W. Firstly, I would like to express

gratitude to Allah for His grace the consent and aid the project completed as planned

with great success.

In completing this project, I was met many people that help me a lot until this

thesis and project successfully complete. Thanks for all the efforts and kindness in

helping me. I also thankful to my parents who have been a giant strength and support

to me in my life and in my studies. Also not forget to the people close to me who

give fully support and give strenghnest throughout this education.

I would also like to acknowledge and thank to my supervisor, Mr. Imran

Hindustan for give me a lot of support, guidance, encourage and advice for me along

my way to complete this project. Lastly, thanks to all my friends and those who

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ABSTRACT

This project report describes the development of an electric meter with

integrated circuit to display household monthly electricity usage. Unlike the

conventional meters, this project also tries to integrate an electricity cost

calculator into the same device. So the meter could display two information

on its screen; amount of electricity usage (kwh) and the amount of bill (RM).

The cost calculations are based on the pricing and electricity tariffs rates

provided by Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB). It is built to educate people to a

better manage the usage of energy. By showing the amount of bill of current

use and appropriate indicator and monitoring element, the household will be

trained to use energy in economically. This project uses PIC18F4553

microcontroller as a processor to execute programming code and instruction

for the output and input peripheral. The main component of this energy meter

is ACS758 50A Current Sensor that detects the current flow in a circuit as a

compulsory element to calculate energy. This product can be considered as

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ABSTRAK

Laporan projek ini menerangkan tentang pembangunan meter elektrik

dengan litar bersepadu untuk memaparkan jumlah penggunaan elektrik

bulanan isi rumah. Tidak seperti meter konvensional yang lain, projek ini

menggabungkan pengiraan kos elektrik ke dalam peranti yang sama. Jadi,

meter ini boleh memaparkan dua maklumat pada skrin iaitu jumlah

penggunaan elektrik (kwh) dan jumlah bil (RM). Pengiraan kos adalah

berdasarkan harga dan tarif kadar elektrik mengikut yang ditentukan oleh

Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB). Ia dibangunkan untuk mendidik orang ramai

supaya menguruskan penggunaan elektrik dengan baik. Dengan menunjukkan

jumlah bil penggunaan semasa dan penunjuk yang sesuai serta elemen

pengawal, pengguna akan dilatih untuk menggunakan tenaga dengan

berhemah. Projek ini akan menggunakan PIC18F4553 mikropengawal

sebagai pemproses untuk melaksanakan kod pengaturcaraan dan arahan

kepada keluaran dan masukan. Komponen utama projek ini ialah ACS758

50A pengesan arus yang mengesan arus yang mengalir dalam litar sebagai

elemen utama pengiraan tenaga. Produk ini boleh dianggap sebagai produk

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I INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction 1

1.2 Backgrounds of Problem 2

1.3 Objectives 4

1.4 Scope of Work 4

1.5 Importance of Study 5

1.6 Thesis Outline 5

II LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Energy Meter 6

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2.3 Energy Calculation 9

2.4 TNB as the Electrical Energy Provider 13

2.5 Component Selection 14

2.5.1 PIC 18F4553 Microcontroller 14

2.5.2 ACS 756 Current Sensor 18

III METHODOLOGY

3.1 Project Planning 21

3.2 Software Development 23

3.2.1 Designing Programming Code 24

3.2.2 Designing Simulation Circuit 25

3.3 Hardware Circuit 27

3.3.1 AC Circuit 28

3.3.2 DC Circuit 30

IV RESULT & DISCUSSION

4.1 Simulation Result 32

4.1.1 Timer Simulation 32

4.1.2 Simulating Analog Input 33

4.1.3 Simulation of Power, Energy and Cost

Calculation 34

4.1.4 Simulation of Indicators and Buttons 36

4.2 Hardware Result 39

4.2.1 Design Schematic Circuit 39

4.2.2 Design PCB Layout Circuit 40

4.2.3 PCB Fabrication & Component Assemble 42

4.2.4 Combining AC & DC Circuit 43

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V CONCLUSSION & RECOMMENDATION

5.1 Conclusion 49

5.2 Project Recommendation 50

5.2.1 Power Recovery 50

5.2.2 Use higher ADC bit Microprocessor 51

5.2.3 Using voltage sensor 51

5.2.4 Use higher capabilities of current sensor 51

5.2.5 Setup for 3-phase type supply voltage 52

REFERENCES 53

APPENDIX A 55

APPENDIX B 56

APPENDIX C 57

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LIST OF FIGURE

NO TITLE PAGE

1.1 Electricity Consumption per kapita in ASEAN 2

1.2 Portable electricity energy meter in market 3

2.1 Single phase Digital Energy Meter 7

2.2 Power Factor Triangle 11

2.3 PIC Microcontroller 15

2.4 PIC 18F4553 pin diagram 16

2.5 50A Current Sensor 19

2.6 ACS 756 Pin out Diagram 20

2.7 Current sensor Wire Assembly 20

3.1 Flowchart of project planning 22

3.2 Preprocessor directives example 24

3.3 Example of function declaration 25

3.4 Example of function definition 25

3.5 Example simulation circuit by Proteus Professional 26

3.6 Microprocessor setup to read programming code 27

3.7 Input/output System block diagram 28

3.8 Single phase AC Electric Flow 29

3.9 AC Schematic Circuit Diagram 29

3.10 Microcontroller block diagram process 31

4.1 Timer Simulation Result 33

4.2 Analog input simulation result 34

4.3 Programming code for analog input reading 34

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4.5 Energy & Cost Simulation Result 36

4.6 Programming code of different LCD screen mode 37

4.7 Simulation result of different LCD screen mode 37

4.8 Simulation result of limit adjuster display 38

4.9 Overall simulation result of integrated Electricity meter Device 38

4.10 Full schematic circuit for integrated Electricity meter Device 39

4.11 PCB Layout Circuit 40

4.12 PCB Design Circuit in 3D View 41

4.13 Fabricated PCB Circuit 42

4.14 PCB Board Component Assembly 42

4.15 Complete Electricity Calculator Meter Device 43

4.16 Main View of Electricity Calculator Meter Device 44

4.17 Left side view 45

4.18 Right side view 45

4.19 Analysis analog reading 46

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LIST OF TABLE

2.1 TNB tariff rates for residential consumer 13

2.2 Comparison PIC 16F877 and PIC 18F4553 17

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

PIC - Programmable Integrated Circuit

LCD - Liquid Crystal Display

LED - Light Emitting Diode

PIC - Peripheral Interface Controller

ADC - Analog to Digital Converter

DC - Direct Current

AC - Alternate Current

PCB - Printed Circuit Board

IC - Integrated Circuit

TNB - Tenaga Nasional Malaysia

kWh - Kilowatt Hour

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LIST OF APPANDICES

A PIC18F4553 Datasheet 55

B ACS756 Current Sensor Datasheet 56

C Gantt Chart 57

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

Power or energy crisis has always been a critical agenda to the world.

Practicing good power management is needed to control massive usage of electrical

energy in industrial, commercial, public and everyday household uses. Since energy

has become the prime contributor to the rapid growth of the Malaysian economy [1],

the utility management emerge as an important thing in order to ensure that the

utility is not burden to the public especially to pay the rate of electricity bills. People

are trying to reduce the cost of electricity bills in several ways as they start to

concern about the uncontrollable electricity usages. A research in UK found that the

regular monitoring of energy patterns can indicate areas of unnecessary consumption

while the reporting of power usage can provide savings of up to 20 percent [2].

The awareness of managing power consumption brings us to an idea to

develop a device that could can monitor the usage of the electricity and educate

people in using the energy. Calculating kilowatt-hour energy doesn‟t give a special

function to the energy meter as the current product did, unless the total cost of the

amount usage is shown as one of the parameter in managing the power consumption.

Expanding the idea, the product would also be installed with an appropriate indicator

and some controlling elements where users have the ability to set when the system

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Basically, the development of this project includes hardware and software

elements in an integrated circuit in order to display monthly electricity usage. Unlike

the conventional meters, this project tries to integrate an electricity cost calculator

into the same device. The outputs being displayed will be electricity usage in

kilowatt-hour (kWh) and amount of current usage in Malaysia Ringgit (RM).

The system acquires the amount of current used and converts it into amount

cost using a microcontroller. The cost calculations are based on the pricing and

electricity tariffs rates provided by the national utility provider in Malaysia, which is

Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB). Both of the parameters will be used in a controlling

element where the user can set up a certain electricity usage amount and an indicator

will be activated once the usage exceeds it.

1.2 Backgrounds of Problem

As the electrical energy consumption is proportional to the usage of

electricity, the higher usage of electricity leads to the higher bill costing. The

uncontrolled daily electricity consumption causes the monthly electricity bill to hike

up without realizing that it exceeds the household budget. In addition, the household

cannot control the usage of electricity because there is no indicator or measurement

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that can tell them the amount cost of current usage.

Figure 1.3: Electricity Consumption per kapita in ASEAN [3] 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

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Moreover, according to the data from World Bank Indicators [3] as shown in

Figure 1.1, the electricity consumption in Malaysia is becoming of an interest nowadays given the fact that the Malaysia‟s electricity consumption per capita is the second highest among the five ASEAN founding nation.

Other than that, the currently assembled electricity energy meter by electrical

energy providers will only shows the current electrical consumption in terms of kWh

rather than showing the cost of energy that has been spent. Psychologically, the

conventional system applied would not affect the trend of electrical consumption, but

it might function accordingly if the meter displays the pricing information. It is

because many households could not understand the readings in kWh instead of in

RM. Real-time pricing in energy meter gives a real cost-controlling opportunity to

the users in practicing a good power management.

Some products that already manufactured such as „Plug-in Electricity Monitor‟ as in Figure 1.2 can measure the amount of usage, however the reading taken directly using a specific plug and socket for electric tools installed on the plug.

[image:19.595.127.522.481.683.2]

It does not measure the overall of the electricity usage.

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Hence, this Integrated Electricity Cost Calculator Meter project is developed

to provide monitoring function to the user about the usage and spending of the

electricity.

1.3 Objectives

The objectives of this project are:

1. To develop and design a device that integrates a meter display cost

calculator in a single device.

2. To design a product with control settings and indicators and simple for

household to use.

1.4 Scope of Work

The scope of this project is basically producing a device that is detachable

from the single phase digital main electricity meter. The device should be able to

calculate the energy consumed by the household and convert it into cost in Malaysian

Ringgit. Both consumptions in kWh and RM will be shown in an LCD display. The

cost calculations are based on the pricing and electricity tariffs rates effective from

1st June 2011 for residential consumer provided by the national utility provider in

Malaysia, which is Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB). According to the TNB tariff

booklet, there are four types of meter reading calculated for residential consumer [4].

This project is focused on the normal meter reading (N type) which is an actual

reading billing of the consumer.

The design and development of the project uses PIC microcontroller to

integrate the input from electricity supply and loads with the output of LCD display

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1.5 Importance of Study

Continuous researches in this area have been conducted for many years since

the emerging technology leads the world of innovation. Since Malaysia is practicing

the Energy Efficient (EE) model under the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology

and Water [5] [6], the application and implementation towards the idea in this

Integrated Electricity Cost Calculator Meter has indirectly supports the efforts where

the energy savings being one of the element of the product. This project could be

considered as green technology and helps the environment in the long run besides

achieving its objective in educating people in practicing good power management

and solve the burden of electricity bill increment.

1.6 Thesis Outline

This report consist of 5 different chapters. The first chapter for this report is

introduction. In introduction, it will have a few of sub-topics, which are problem

statement, objectives, scope of project, and the importance of the study. Basically

this chapter is an overview of the project where the idea being generated from

problem statement followed by managing the entire basis scope of the project.

Second chapter for this report is literature review. In this chapter it also divided into

a few of sub chapters that will explain the study of electrical energy meter,

calculation involve and suitable component for the project. The third chapter is

methodology part. This part will explain about some of the guidelines for this project

and also clearly mentioned steps that should be taken for this project. It show the step

to achieve the main objective in this thesis. The fourth chapter is the result and

discussion. This part will describe about the results and findings obtained and also

discussing the matter related for this project. The last chapter is conclusion and

recommendation. In this part, it will conclude whether this project achieve the

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CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Energy Meter

Electricity energy meter is a device that measures the amount of electrical

energy consumed by a residence, business, or an electrically powered device where it

is typically calibrated in billing units of kilowatt-hours (kWh). It is operate by

continuously measuring the instantaneous voltage and current and finding the

product of these to get the instantaneous electrical power (watts) which is then

integrated against time to get the energy used [7]. There are two types of supply

voltage from electrical energy provider, single-phase and three-phase supply. A

single-phase meter measures usage from a 240 volt supply through two wires, and a

3-phase meter is supplied with 415 volts through four wires. Since this Integrated

Electricity Cost Calculator Meter designed for residential consumer, the single phase

input with the lower current rate is being used rather than three phase input.

The electricity energy meters fall into two basic categories, electromechanical

and electronic meter. Electromechanical meter is an analog type meter that operates

by counting the revolutions of a non-magnetic metal disc which is made to rotate at a

speed proportional to the power passing through the meter, while the electronic meter

is a digital type meter that operates the input of loads, voltage, current and

instantaneous time to a digital signal processing system and convert the energy to the

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analog meter, this type of meter is being considered to be used in this project.

Moreover, the way to process the input is more easier using digital approach were it

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can be read directly to microcontroller unit and absolutely easy to analyze data.

Figure 2.2: Single phase Digital Energy Meter

Single phase digital energy meter as shown in Figure 2.1 is example of

common digital energy meter that being used by household user in Malaysia. In

Malaysia, there are four companies that was assigned by electrical energy provider to

provide energy meter for household use. There are Smart Meter Technologies Sdn

Bhd (SMT), Malaysian Intellligence Meters Sdn Bhd (MIM), Krizik Malaysia Sdn

Bhd (KMSB) and MISA Sdn Bhd (MISA). These four companies are responsible to

produce a digital meter with energy calculation that based on the TNB tariff rates.

As the research area of this project involve the calculation of energy, this

project needs to get advises and guidelines from one of the energy meter provider to

get a clear way and method on how to measure input and calculate energy with

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2.2 Recent Research Project

There are several research project conducted related to this system where the

electricity energy meter was developed digitally using several types of digital signal

processor or microcontroller. The development of these products in research market

shows the variety of system with different way of integrating digital energy meter

based on the function and application involve.

Sudin et. al [9] presented the Digital Household Energy Meter where this

product consist of a digital electrical pricing system which composed of a

communication system that upload usage data from the meter to a central computer

for data processing. The display panel is using computer interfaces developed using

Visual Basic software that connected via RS-232 communication cable to MK-6

Genius, a type of digital energy meter. The idea implement seem to be similar with

the development of this Electricity Cost Calculator Meter device, but it is no

hardware produce because the simulation of the amount cost are calculate internally

using software interfaces.

Eng, (2011) produced a device called Cost Monitoring Digital Power Meter

[10] which is calculating the electrical energy and convert into cost. It is uses the PIC

16F877A microcontroller as the main component used to interface the input and

output. Input of the system is voltage from the supply, current from the load, and

instantaneous time, while the output is LCD display and LED indicator. The 240

volts AC Voltage is being reduced using step down transformer. The measurement of

this device is using Energy Meter Chip that integrates the voltage and current

together before the outputs of the integrated circuit goes to the PIC microcontroller

and produce the output in the form of pulses. The PIC Microcontroller was

programmed using appropriate programming language to give the instruction of

calculating the energy and cost and also controlling the output display and indicator.

However, this system has a problem where the calculating value is not accurate as

the real energy meter did. Observing the problem founds that the transformer used in

this system resulting the high percentage of loss voltage while the input is being

stepped down. Thus, the linearity of actual input and the reference voltage would not