Srinagar, Feb 13, CNS: Three girls from Kashmir capital Srinagar have conceived an idea of developing ‘Smart Electric Metering System’ to overcome power crisis in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Sameena from Kathidarwaza, Shaista Hasan Mir from Bemina and Sehreen Ashraf from Habakadal who are the students of SSM College of Engineering and Technology
Department of Computer Engineering are sure that their innovative idea will help Power Development Department to overcome the power crisis in Kashmir Valley.
“Project was undertaken considering the growing situation of the power crisis in the Valley with the mishandling at the ground level as the major cause. This has led to the replacement of electric meters every now and then to meet the demand of the customers and service providers. Moreover, growing use of smart phones will make the working of the smart metering easy and affordable. The introduction of the smart meters will eliminate the role of middle man thus reducing the human interference to negligibly low levels,” Sameena, Shaista and Sehreen told news agency CNS.
They said their idea about the Smart Electric Metering System’ project received great appreciation from Power Development Department (PDD). “We shared the details of the project with the Chief Engineer PDD Hashmat Qazi and he truly liked it and appreciated us for our job.”
Office of the Electric Maintenance and R.E Wing Kashmir while reviewing the project of these 3 budding Engineers stated that: “this project has introduced a number of new features to already existing Smart Meters like IOT/cloud based data analysis, tariff based monitoring, meter theft and relay based control. The production cost is lower and the system can be designed from the already available analog meters. This system is more general in terms of GSM based communication between user and meter.”
The features of the proposed Smart Energy meter are tariff based metering, accurate interface of already existing analog meters using LDR sensors, interrupt enabled meter theft control, IOT based data collection of meter data, monthly bill and tariff range messaging using GSM, power cut-off for LOW balance, prepaid based metering, Wi-Fi integration to Smart home and application and website-based data visualization on cloud Project Management.
While divulging information about the project, Sameena, Shaista and Sehreen said that Arduino and GSM based smart pre-paid energy meter for advanced metering and billing system was designed and its prototype was built to check its applicability.
“The main objective of our proposed system is to implement and develop very low-cost Wi-Fi-based single phase digital energy meter with IoTs concepts. The system provides data communication between digital energy meters and web server gateway, so that it can monitor the energy management system.”
“The meter is able to read and send data via wireless protocol using GSM technology through GSM modem managing both the meter as well as the line connection. For GSM module the network coverage of the SIM is used. The Energy Meter can use SMS or/and Wi-Fi to send the power/unit data to cloud, so that user can access the data including the recharge done and the units consumed through Apps and websites.”
“By using this system, the billing of the power users can be based on actual consumption rather than estimate based from the previous consumption.”
“Our proposed system uses energy meter with microcontroller system to monitor energy usage using a meter. The meter is used to monitor units consumed and transmit the units as well as cost charged over the internet using Net connection. This allows user to easily check the energy usage along with the cost charged online using a simple cloud-based webpage. Thus, the energy meter monitoring system allows user to effectively monitor electricity meter readings and check the billing online with ease. The meter is enabled with anti-theft mechanism. Any theft in the power consumption would to monitored through the App or website. The system sends warning on the low balance to the customers and then automatically cuts the power supply off. As there is no human involvement in the entire process, there is no chance of manual errors. These put more control into the hands of customers by giving them more detailed information about power consumption.”
“The proposed Smart energy meter is an advanced version of the currently available Smart meters. They fit well in the concept of smart homes with the addition of IOT and several other features.”
According to trio, the project was done under the guidance of the Mrs Yaseem (Project guide) and was co-ordinated by Mr Khalid Makhdoomi (Project co-ordinator).