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GSM Based Automatic Energy Meter Reading

System with Instant Billing
Ashna.k

Sudhish N George

PG Scholar, Electronics & Communication Dept.

National Institute of Technology,
Calicut, India,673601
E-mail:ashnabal@gmail.com.

Assistant Professor, Electronics & Communication Dept.

National Institute of Technology,
Calicut, India,673601
E-mail: sudhish @nitc.ac.in

Abstract The technology of e-metering (Electronic

Metering) has gone through rapid technological advancements
and there is increased demand for a reliable and efficient
Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) system. This paper presents
the design of a simple low cost wireless GSM energy meter and its
associated web interface, for automating billing and managing
the collected data globally. The proposed system replaces
traditional meter reading methods and enables remote access of
existing energy meter by the energy provider. Also they can
monitor the meter readings regularly without the person visiting
each house. A GSM based wireless communication module is
integrated with electronic energy meter of each entity to have
remote access over the usage of electricity. A PC with a GSM
receiver at the other end, which contains the database acts as the
billing point. Live meter reading from the GSM enabled energy
meter is sent back to this billing point periodically and these
details are updated in a central database. A new interactive, user
friendly graphical user interface is developed using Microsoft
visual studio .NET framework and C#. With proper
authentication, users can access the developed web page details
from anywhere in the world. The complete monthly usage and
due bill is messaged back to the customer after processing these
data.
KeywordsAutomatic Meter Reading System (AMRS); GSM;
PIC; Short Messaging System (SMS); Visual Studio .NET; C#.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Electrical power has become indispensable to human

survival and progress. Apart from efforts to meet growing
demand, automation in the energy distribution is also necessary
to enhance peoples life standard. Traditional meter reading by
human operator is inefficient to meet the future residential
development needs. So there is increased demand for
Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) systems which collects
meter readings electronically, and its application is expanding
over industrial, commercial and utility environment.
Electronic utility meters are an important step towards
automating the utility metering process. Automated utility
meters have many new features that help to reduce the cost of
utilities to customers and the cost of delivering utilities to the
utility provider. The onset of rural electrification provides
opportunities for new and more efficient metering technologies
to be implemented. Traditional electro-mechanical meters, still
widely used today, are prone to drift over temperature and time

as a result of the analogue and mechanical nature of the

components in these meters. Collection of meter readings is
also inefficient, because a meter reader has to physically be onsite to take the readings. This method of collecting of meter
readings becomes more problematic and costly when readings
have to be collected from vast, and often scattered rural areas.
Meter readers are reluctant to make the effort to travel to such
areas and will often submit inaccurate estimations of the
amount of electricity consumed. For households at the top of
high buildings and luxury housing plots, traditional meter
reading is highly inefficient. There exists chance for missing
bills, absence of consumer etc. Even though these conventional
meters were replaced with more efficient electronic energy
meters these problems still persists. So a system which will
provide the bill in users mobile will be more suitable in the
current scenario. Here a new method of post paid electronic
energy metering is introduced in this paper which will
automatically sense the used energy, records these reading
continuously, then sends it to the billing point through the
existing GSM network. Finally after processing the collected
data bill is generated using a web based system software and is
send back to the customer as SMS (Short Messaging
System).As it is web oriented once the data is updated, the
registered users and authority can monitor and analyse the
generated bill of any month by sitting anywhere in the world.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY AND RELATED WORKS
For this work existing meter reading techniques in India are
analyzed and conducted an extensive study on different energy
measuring instruments available now. In existing system either
an electronic energy meter or an electro-mechanical meter is
fixed in the premise for measuring the usage. The meters
currently in use are only capable of recording kWh units. The
kWh units used then still have to be recorded by meter readers
monthly, on foot. The recorded data need to be processed by a
meter reading company. For processing the meter reading,
company needs to firstly link each recorded power usage
datum to an account holder and then determine the amount
owed by means of the specific tariff in use.
Many systems built on various platforms have been
proposed by different research groups all over the world for
Automatic Meter Reading. There are two types of AMR
systems, wire-based and wireless. Power Line Carrier (PLC)
and Telephone Line Network (optical/ cable) are wire-based

This project was supported and financed by National Institute of Technology,

Calicut, INDIA, 673601.

978-1-4673-5090-7/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

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AMR system and several related works are available. Many emetering systems have now been proposed, based on GPRS,
Bluetooth, GSM as explained in [1], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] and
[8].Design of an Electric Energy Meter for long-distance data
information transfers which based upon GPRS is proposed in
[1]. These systems cant be implemented so easily because the
regular use of GPRS is still a dream to the common people .A
GSM Energy meter with instant billing facility is introduced in
[2] and [3],but still the problem of missing SMS will degrade
the accuracy and performance. A more reliable and userfriendly system with web portal for multiple access using the
advanced Visual studio .net frame work is created in this
project which will manage the data efficiently even if there is
loss of SMS. It makes the design different from the previous
proposals. The GSM/GPRS channel is a very useful means of
communication as sending data as SMS turns out to be a very
handy tool, due to its good area coverage capability and cost
effectiveness. Different state electricity boards in INDIA
started using GSM facility for fault management and so there is
increased demand for this method.
For this design, energy meter specifications and tariff
structure followed by the Kerala State Electricity Board
(KSEB) are adopted. In this project the front end is User
friendly and any employee with minimum knowledge of
computers can work on this software. Employees can read the
meter by sitting in their office.

are primarily designed for low power consumption. As they

were operating within a short range (power class- dependent: 1
meter, 10 meters, 100 meters) this technique was not effective
and implemented only in areas with high population density.
So a new approach of using an energy measurement
technique that encompasses the GSM network as a mean of
transmitting energy data is more relevant. The GSM/GPRS
network offers most coverage in most developed and
developing countries. This method is also effective in rural
areas, which are not densely populated, and in which, most
people do not have access to a fixed telephone network. So in a
country like India we need to focus more on this method as it
can be implemented very easily and effectively.
According to the latest report by researcher Gartner India's
mobile subscriber base should grow to 993 million by 2014,
which expects the world's fastest-growing mobile market to
close 2010 with more than 660 million subscribers. India is the
second-largest wireless market in the world after China with its
618 million mobile subscribers at end-May, according to data
from the country's telecoms regulator. Mobile connections
were at 525 million at end of 2009.

A. A lookback at GSM Technology and GSM meter in India.

Several transmission protocols in wired/wireless manner
were introduced so far to read digital meters remotely at
different areas of India. The Digital watt-hour meters are
microprocessor based meters which replaced traditional
electromechanical meters.

Fig. 2 India-GSM mobile subscribers.

Latest data by the Cellular Operators Association of India

(COAI) showed GSM operators had added 6.68 million in
November 2012 and the GSM subscriber base was at 632.08
million. GSM operators added 7.55 million new subscribers in
December, taking the total GSM user base to 639.64 million in
the country, according to the COAIs data released.
Fig.1 Traditional Electromechanical meter Vs Electronic meter.

Tele watt meters were implemented to transmit data on

monthly basis to a remote central office through a dedicated
telephone line and a pair of modems. A microprocessor/DSPbased meter is used in this to measure the electricity
consumption of multiple users in a residential area. A master
PC at the control centre was used to send commands to a
remote meter, which in turn transmitted data back, using the
Power Line Communication (PLC) technique. These
techniques were mainly implemented in areas that had a fixed
telephone network. Bluetooth energy meters were designed and
implemented in some areas where several meters in close
proximity, communicated wirelessly with a Master PC. These

In this scenario the utilization of existing GSM network for

metering in India will be a cost effective method for all class of
people.
III.

GSM METER - ARCHITECTURE

When developing a technology that might replace one

which has been in use for more than thirty years, not only the
key issue needs to be addressed, but added functionality and
solutions to other obstacles presented by the previous
technology need to be addressed. Even existing meter readers
and other employers have to accept the quality and
effectiveness of the proposed system.

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The engineering challenge is to develop a product that can
serve as wireless system replacement for the metering and
billing system currently in use. This emphasis that the meter
under development has to work under the old circumstances
and perform all the previous functions, but also be able to relay
the information in a new way and perform additional functions,
without the need of replacing all meters on the electrical grid
simultaneously.
The developed AMR system consists of three main parts: a
digital GSM power meter installed in every individual
consumer unit, transmission facility (SMS gateway), and
billing server at the energy provider side. Overview and
functional block details are shown in Fig. 3.

IV. DETAILED DESIGN

This GSM energy meter is constructed using the microchip
single phase dedicated energy metering IC MCP3905A, a
display, 8-bit PIC Microcontroller PIC16F877A and GSM
modem. A 10A class I single phase meter is designed with
embedded GSM modem which utilizes the existing GSM
network to send its power usage value as SMS to the energy
provider wirelessly. While sending the message each time, the
same data is also stored in the associated non-volatile memory
(EEPROM). RTC module is also integrated in the meter to
have time stamped recording of usage details. The detailed
design blocks are shown in Fig. 4 and Configuration of
different PIC ports for performing this functionality is
demonstrated in Fig.6

Fig. 3 Overview of Proposed System.

The proposed system for energy billing is automatic, do not

require human effort to read the meter, consumer can directly
know the amount he has to pay at the time of bill preparation
itself and can even pay the amount online.
Fig.4 Detailed Design Blocks

Fig. 5 Detailed Circuit of energy meter

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a very small coin cell (3V CMOS battery) which runs
continuously even in power failure.

Fig. 6 Configuration of PIC Ports

In the office, the GSM unit will receive these data and
software will calculate the total consumption of each user. The
design can be discussed as two broad categories, Hardware
detailed design and software web portal design.
V.

HARDWARE DETAILED DESIGN

In this system the two wire power supply is connected to

the energy metering IC through the analog front end of the
MCP3905 energy meter evaluation board which provides
average active power information via a pulse output which may
be then used to be processed by a Micro Controller Unit
(MCU). The GSM unit is interfaced to the micro controller via
a MAX 232 convertor as in Fig.7 (b). User GSM modem
transmits usage details to office modem. Every house/premise
has a unique number (consumer number), which is given by the
corresponding authority.
The detailed circuit of the meter constructed using off the
shelf components such as evaluation board (MCP3905A),
Microcontroller (PIC16F877) and LCD (20x4) and GSM
Modem (Fargo Maestro -20) is shown in Fig.5.
At the input prototype area of the evaluation board a 250
, 10A meter shunt is connected as current-sensing element.
A. Power Supply
The microcontroller and other devices get power supply
from AC to DC adapter or from direct ac lines through voltage
regulator. The adapter output voltage will be 12V DC nonregulated. The 7805 voltage regulators are used to convert 12
V to 5V DC. Circuit details are shown in Fig.7 (a).The low cost
DC power supply circuit included in the MCP3905 evaluation
board which is created from a half wave zener diode-limited
AC signal feeding a 7805 +5V regulator can also be used.
B. External EEPROM memory
Selected EEPROM is Atmel 24C256.This memory device
is used to store the data for off line process. i.e. it stores the
amount of unit the user consumed while transferring each
SMS.
C. Real Time Clock (RTC)
This is used to maintain the real time and date in off line
processing. RTC counts seconds, minutes, hours, date of the
month, month, day of the week, and year with leap-year
compensation valid up to 2100.The RTC selected here is
DS1307 .It is low cost, easy to solder, and can run for years on

Fig.7 (a) Power supply (b) MAX 232 interfacing.

D. Implementation Details
Output pulses from the metering IC are counted using the
default timer of PIC MCU. The signal from meter through
Octocoupler is normally high (5V) and the high to low
transition of this voltage wave indicates the occurrence of a
pulse. The counting of low pulse is an inefficient method as
improper grounding issues may even be counted as a pulse by
the device. So the produced pulse is reversed before applying
to the counter. A TTL compatible inverter circuit is used for
this purpose.
The microcontroller is programmed to read data from the
metering IC every second. When microcontroller reads the
power consumption, it is stored and current reading is
incremented in its software. In this design meter is calibrated
such that for 1 unit of energy (kWh) consumption, it generates
3200 pulses in LED. (It can be calibrated for a meter constant
of 1000 imp/kWh or 100 imp/kWh or 32000 imp/kWh etc as
per the requirement).
Energy per count, Epc = (I max X V rms)/3200.

(1)

Where Imax is the maximum load current and Vrms is the RMS
voltage.
Energy per LED pulse, Epp =1000 X 3600/ Mpr.

(2)

where Mpr is the pulse rate of the meter in impulse/ kWh.

Practical set up created for transmitter prototype developed
using the meter circuit of Fig .5 is shown below in Fig.8.A
variable load set up is connected and usage is measured.

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Fig.10 GSM Meter after casing and sample results on display.

Fig.8. Transmitter prototype.

PCB layout for the meter routed with the aid of Cadence
Orcad 9.2 suite and corresponding printed board are shown in
Fig.9.Mechanical design and assembly of the developed meter
is shown in Fig.10.The device has a plastic enclosure. It has
less weight and easy to handle. For status indication, a green
LED is placed in front side. 20x4 LCD display is there on the
top of the meter to display the reading and RTC time date
information. Push button switches are provided to read
EEPROM content.

B. Billing Software
A web oriented GUI designed especially for e-billing,
manages all received SMS readings, updates the database
regularly, computes the monthly bill amount, and notify the
consumer his bill details through SMS. It also publishes the bill
in the designed web portal and consumer can log for getting the
usage details any time. Printed postal mails can also be
provided for respective consumer. Authority can log for bill
preparation and analysis of any collected data. Information
portal helps to assist the smart meter to log consumption data to
the database. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 IDE is used to
develop the web portal. Data base used is Microsoft SQL
Server2005 (Fig. 11).

Fig.11 Database details.

Fig.9. Orcad layout and printed PCB.

VI.

SOFTWARE DETAILED DESIGN

A. Microcontroller software design

All software used for the PIC16F877 in the control circuitry
was developed in Mikroelektronikas MikroC PRO 4.15 IDE.
The meter PIC MCU is programmed via the In-System
Programming (ISP) interface. PICkit 2 v 2.61 is used for
programming the target PIC. GSM modem is controlled by
using AT command for all kinds of operations.The algorithm
for meter were developed by considering all the required
outputs. The brain of the meter is this developed firmware. It
can be modified and updated any time, even in the field. The
firmware is written in embedded C.

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2008 provide an integrated

development environment (IDE) for maximizing developer
productivity with the .NET framework. It is used to develop
console and graphical user interface applications along with
Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and
web services in both native code together with managed code
for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows
Mobile, Windows CE, .NET framework, .NET Compact
framework and Microsoft Silverlight. In this application source
code is written in C#. The .NET version of C# is an
improved version with more features and additions. The
developed site can be checked by running locally on any PC
using ASP.net development server local host. Designed home
page of the web portal is shown in Fig.12. It can be hosted to

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the server for practical use, once hosted the user can access it
from anywhere through internet.

Fig.12 Home page

Users are categorized as administrator, staff and consumer.

Any user can log using the user login option available in the
web site as shown below in Fig.13. Administrator can perform
category registration, section addition, tariff updates, staff
registration and message setting. After the initial login the
administrator can connect the GSM modem to the web portal
through serial port / USB. Initially required hardware
configurations have to done for the modem setup. Then by
selecting the corresponding port administrator can connect it to
the system for accepting SMS from meter.

Fig.13 User login, Category registration, Port setting, Tariff table updating.

Once it is connected it will remain as connected for the

whole system and continues receiving SMS till the
administrator disconnects it using the disconnect option.
Different staff members under the administrator are registered
using the member registration option provided to the
administrator. These operations are demonstrated in Fig. 13.
The registered staffs are assigned to a particular section and
they are registering the consumers under them. Registered staff
member can login and add any number of consumers under his
section. Also he is responsible for preparing the bills of
consumers under him. By simple selection of consumer name
and month, automatic bill generation occurs by auto processing
of the background data.

VII. RESULTS
Designed meter is able to send the usage value at a
predefined time and the status is displayed in LCD for the next
5 minutes after sending, as shown above in Fig. 10.

Fig.14 Generated Bill.

Example of the prepared bill by a staff member is shown in

Fig.14.Consumer can login to view this bill. By selecting a
particular month he can view his usage history any time.

Fig.15 Consumer registration example and SMS reception in that

consumers phone.

The consolidated bill prepared sent to the users mobile, for

a particular month of usage, for a particular consumer is
depicted in Fig.15. Prepared Bill is successfully sent back to
the registered consumer at the time of bill generation itself.
Backend database details and HTML source code details can
be accessed anytime by the administrator.
VIII. CONCLUSION
Various electronic meters have been developed and are still
being developed. However the use of GSM in this particular
system provides numerous advantages over methods that have
been previously used. Data transmission is charged at standard
SMS rates, thus the charges are not based on the duration of
data transmission. The cost efficient transmission of readings

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ensures that power consumption values can be transmitted
more frequently to a remote station. The implications of being
able to transmit readings more often are that energy utilities
will be able to generate timely bills, better understand energy
demand patterns, manage meter failures more efficiently and
manage fraud better.

is willing to add online payment options in the hosted web

page, instant payment by the consumer from anywhere in the
world is also possible.

The developed system is highly effective in the sense it is

able to eliminate the drawback of serial communication. i.e
even though it lacks acknowledgement of the sent SMS it is
not affecting system performance. If a message is missing then
also as the system is accepting the cumulative value next time
which includes the lost content. And while preparing bill the
system is accepting the maximum consumption value. These
implementations make the designed system unique and
effective compared to the previous proposals.

[1]

The system also poses much less of a safety risk since

human interaction has been minimized. The generated bill is
available as SMS at the time of generation itself and hard
copies are available to the consumer as postal mail. A soft copy
can be send to the consumers e-mail if consumer is registered
with his e-mail address .The same idea can be expanded to
water and gas meter reading system by proper modification.
The designed web portal options can be added to the existing
web page of any energy provider worldwide and it can be
hosted for public.
The system can be modified by using latest SPI
metering ICs which will provide more parameters. By using the
Microchip three phase IC MCP3909 the same idea can be
extended to three phase systems also. Power factor
improvement options can be added in future. By adding an
initialization message option at the time of installation the
meter time can be updated from the server. If energy provider

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