InternationalJournalonElectricalEngineeringandInformaticsVolume6,Number1,March2014

Design and Assemble of Low Cost Prepaid Smart Card Energy

Meter A Novel Design

Sudarshan K. Valluru

Department of Electrical Engineering, Delhi Technological University
(Formerly Delhi College of Engineering)
Bawana Road, Delhi-110042, India.
valluru.sk@ gmail.com.

Abstract: In India, presently distribution companies are collecting revenues from their
consumers by metering and billing. The expenses for metering, billing, and collecting
dues became complex as electricity is supplied to large number of consumers located in
far-flung areas, resulted in high cost per unit. This may encourage consumers to fudge
meter readings. To address these problems, distribution companies can opt prepaid
smart card energy meter, which overcomes the whole problems associated with the
present billing system and will make the consumer more conscious about usage
electricity. This paper explores the design and assemble of smart card prepaid electricity
meter system, which enables the consumer to buy required amount of energy and also
provides information about their credit balance. A prototype of the system has been
developed with the state-of-the-art digital and information technology and proven to be
stable, reliable, tamper resistant, low cost, and easy maintenance.

Keywords: Smart Card, Micro controller AT89C51, MAX-232 Serial Communication,
Liquid Crystal Display, Pre-paid Electricity Protocol

1. Introduction
Electricity is a major source of energy in the world and used in every civilized country for
domestic, commercial and industrial purpose. Recently owing to raise in number of new
housing, commercial and industrial developments in India, the number of consumers of
electricity have been increased in the network distribution. The monthly power bill for
consumers is calculated from post-paid meter reading based on the electricity consumption.
But the disadvantage of this system is that meter readers are needed to visit every door to door
to read the meter for billing purposes. This is a tiresome, lengthy and error prone process.
Moreover, there is a chance for consumers as well as meter readers to do the corruption. In
post-paid system [1], the monthly bill sent to the consumer by mail in the beginning of the
month and all the consumers often need to gather in a long queue to pay the bills. This
procedure is tiresome and time consuming.
In this paper, a prepaid metering (PPM) system [2] has been proposed. Each consumer has
to install digitally designed prepaid electricity meter along with smart card in their home, office
or industry. Based on the electricity utilization the credit will be deducted automatically from
the smart card. When the credit goes below the threshold value, the meter gives warning icons
and if credit reaches to zero the meter will automatically cut off the power supply. The
consumer has to go to the vending station with the smart card and money to buy electricity. In
the vending station, user can buy the credit to his smart card by paying the money. Then the
consumer will insert the smart card to the meter and the meter will be recharged. In prepaid
billing system, the consumer will be always conscious about the remaining credit and thus try
to use electricity carefully and stop its misuse. Furthermore, in contrast with post-paid billing,
the consumer can buy credit at any time in the month from the vending station.

Received: August 31
st
, 2013. Accepted: February 3
rd
, 2014
65

In the present proposed scheme there is no need of manual intervention to note meter
reading which avoids hassle in billing and distributions companies make money promptly
which certainly helps them to generate more revenue.

2. PPM System Architecture
Prepaid meters (PPM) will be installed in home, commercial or industries. For a specific
region there will be a vending station also called cash dispensing unit (CDU) from where the
consumer will buy credit. The vending stations hold the regional user data base and billing
software. The communication between the meter and the vending station is done by smart card.
All vending stations are connected with a central server called the master station through the
Internet. Master station holds the integrated database of all the vending stations, user account
creation software and overall system analysis tools. The overall architecture of the prepaid
metering system is shown in Figure1.and brief description of several components of the system
is discussed below.


Figure 1. Architecture of the Prepaid Metering System

A. Master Station
Master station holds the integrated database of all the vending stations. Creation, edition
and deletion of users account are also done from here. In the master station, the values of the
meter settings variables are given. User transaction report or meter status report of any user can
be generated from here. As the master station holds the integrated database of all the vending
stations, the overall analysis of the system can be done from here.

B. Vending Station
Vending station is the office where the clients go to by credits and holds the database of all
local users. Every user of the prepaid meter has smartcards, which establishes the connectivity
between the PPM and the vending station. The Figure 2. shows the basic components of
vending station mainly consist of server PC, smartcard reader/writer and slip printers to print
receipts. When a client needs to buy credit, goes to the local vending station with the smart
card and money. To keep the database of the vending station up-to- date, clients are advised to
punch the smart card in the meter before coming to the vending station. When the card is
punched, the meters last status is copied to the smart card. In the vending station, the last
status of the meter is firstly read from the smart card and save it in database. Then according to
the clients demand, vending station writes the credit in the smart card. When the user returns
home and punch the smart card in the meter, the credit is added with the remaining credit and
the new meter settings are activated. Vending stations maintain relation with the master station
through internet. Vending station uploads all the meter status and vending data to the master
station and it downloads the latest meter settings from the master station.

Sudarshan K. Valluru
66

C. Smart card Unit

A smart card reader/writer [3] is interfaced using the serial three wire bus protocol with the
CPU to read/write data to smart card. The smart card readers Reset and Clock pins are
connected with two output ports of the CPU. The Data pin is connected with a port which can
be configured both in input and output direction so that data can both be read and write to
smart card. The SLE4428 type smart card has been used with 1KB of non-volatile EEPROM
memory and it is write-protected by a 16 bit password. Different meter settings and meter
status variables are mapped in different memory locations of the smart card.


Figure 2. Block diagram of Vending Station




Figure 3. Block diagram of Prepaid Energy Meter


Design and Assemble of Low Cost Prepaid Smart Card Energy
67

D. Prepaid meter
The most important constraint is design and assembles of prepaid energy meter. The block
diagram of prepaid energy meter [4] is shown in Figure3.and its components are discussed
below sections.

3. The Design of Intelligent Controller
This system is composed of software and hardware structures. The hardware structure
consists of a digital energy meter module interfaced to an AT89C51 [5-11] low-power, high-
performance CMOS 8-bit micro controller has 40-pin, a highly stable 24 MHz oscillator, 4 KB
flash programmable and erasable read only memory (PEROM), 128 bytes of RAM, 32 I/O
lines, two 16-bit timer/counters, a five vector two-level interrupt architecture, a full duplex
serial port, on-chip oscillator and clock circuitry. In addition, the AT89C51 is designed with
static logic for operation down to zero frequency and supports two software selectable power
saving modes. The Idle Mode stops the CPU while allowing the RAM, timer/counters, serial
port and interrupt system to continue functioning. The Power-down Mode saves the RAM
contents but freezes the oscillator disabling all other chip functions until the next hardware
reset.PIN P0.0-P0.7, P1.0- 1.7, P2.0 - P2.7,and P3.0-P3.7 may as general I/O and LCD analog
output. In the16pin LCD, first pin grounded, Second pin connected to power supply and 3
rd
pin
will be connected to variable pot to control the contrast of the LCD. LCD data lines are
connected to port P0, The microcontroller pins P2.7, P2.6 and P2.5 are connected to the LCD
control pins RS, R/W and EN respectively. The ALE, PSEN, EA pins are left isolated. For the
execution of the program of micro-controller requires clock pulses of frequency 12MHz which
generated by the crystal oscillator with grounding capacitance 33PF,therefore XTAL2 and
XTAL1 pins of micro-controller are connected to the crystal oscillator. The RX(P3.0) and TX
(P3.1) are connected to the 12 and 11 pins of MAX 232 serial communication via DB9
connector to interface the Smart Card Reader module, from that smart card the data regarding
the amount is fed to the micro controller gets activated and starts to take the data from the
4N35 optocoupler. The micro controller P3.2 connected to the IRLED digital energy meter via
optocoupler, with external interrupt0 the number units consumed is counted with the help of
the counted pulses which are generated from the optocoupler. The IRLED blinks when there is
a unit consumed gives the IR rays incident on optocoupler which itself drives the transistor
base connected to P3.2. The micro-controller counts the number of units and simultaneously
monitors the smart card reader for the presence of the card. The micro-controller reads the total
purchased units from the smart card and units value has been reduced by one for each and
every unit consumed. If the units in the smart card become zero then the micro-controller gives
the signal to the relay to switch off the total supply to the energy meter. The P2.0 is connected
to the relay through the transistor. The 40
th
pin (V
cc
) and 20
th
pin (GND) of microcontroller
connected to 5 V power supply and ground respectively. 9
th
pin will be connected to the reset
and by pressing the reset pin the C-Language program in the micro-controller will be executed.
Therefore the micro controller gets the data from the energy meter and SLE4428 card reader
and also controls the total power supply of the system [12]. The design diagram of intelligent
AT89C51micro controller, energy meter, Display and Relay Control Circuit is shown in Figure
4.
Sudarshan K. Valluru
68

Figure 4. Display and Relay Control Circuit of Prepaid Energy Meter
Design and Assemble of Low Cost Prepaid Smart Card Energy
69

A. The Design of Software

The main protocol has five phases for controlling the consumption of electricity based on
proper authorisation by using smartcard; balance checking, decision making, decision process
and termination. Control systems for working process main protocol [13] flow chart is shown
in Figure5.and the other sub-modules of flow chart are omitted.

B. Prototype Development
Based on the design discussed above, prepaid smart card energy meter shown in Figure6
has been constructed and assembled in the laboratory; the meter technical specifications [14]
are shown in Table 1. The test results are tabulated in Table 2 and precision experimentally
obtained for this new meter better than 97%. This value is compatible with the commercially
available energy meters in the market.



Figure 5. Pre-paid electricity protocol
Sudarshan K. Valluru
70

Figure 6. Proto type of Pre-paid smart card meter


Table 1.Technical Specifications


Table 2. Test results over 24 - hours
Type Accuracy
Rated
Voltage
Frequency Display Information Record
Contacted IC
card Pre-Paid
meter
Class 1.0 Single-
Phase
230V
50Hz LED
display
The energy credited
and used will be
recorded
Lamp
load(W)
Number
of
Hours
Load
Measured
by Standard
Meter(kWH)
Load
Measured
by Pre-Paid
Meter(kWH)
Deviation
Error
(%)
Precision
(%)
200 6 1.2 1.17 0.03 2.5 97.5
100 6 0.6 0.582 0.018 3.0 97
60 6 0.36 0.3528 0.0072 2.0 98
40 6 0.24 0.2328 0.0072 3.0 97
Mean 24 2.4 2.3376 0.0624 2.6 97.4
Design and Assemble of Low Cost Prepaid Smart Card Energy
71

4. Conclusion
A prototype of the system has been developed and tested successfully. In this paper, the
advantages of prepaid metering system and its design components have been discussed. The
meter features includes with alarming of remainder, storing data up to 20 years. This prepaid
metering system minimizes the human intervention in meter reading, bill calculations and bill
delivery which ultimately reduces many defects than the currently existing post paid billing
systems. This system was specially designed for India but can also be implemented in any
other country. Of course, the basic principles implemented here can be easily extended to the
case of three-phase meters. This is certainly beneficial to both consumers and power
distribution companies.

References
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[12] Tian Yew Lim and Tat-Wai Chan Experimenting Remote Kilowatthour Meter Reading
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Sudarshan K. Valluru
72

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Design and Assemble of Low Cost Prepaid Smart Card Energy
73