Design and implementation of Arduino based building energy management meter with GSM platform

Abstract

There is high demand for electrical energy since electrical energy is very essential in both industrial and domestic events, and that has request for the introduction of diverse energy meters by various electricity companies. The need for energy at high request requires some disciplines in order to use it efficiently. One of the disciplines is building electrical energy management where house tenants exercise to use least consuming loads and switching off unnecessary load. On the side of electricity providers, energy meters were introduced to manage electricity consumed by customers. In Rwanda, families living in big and compound houses desire to have isolated energy meters from other tenants. This is because the individual’s cannot monitor and control the energy consumption of each individual, and that gets miscalculation in energy bill sharing which also brings conflicts between tenants one accusing others to misuse energy. When happens to landlord to have supplementary energy meter from utility companies, having about ten or more energy meters, the former causing overcrowding of energy meters on the wall of a building which makes the wall loses its attractiveness and there is a probability of fire occurrence in the house because of the wires are not well arranged also, requesting a supplementary energy meter from Utility companies charged you more compared to the previous one. Furthermore, energy companies want enormous sum of money and labors to produce more energy meters and this can cause monetary loss to the energy companies. This has consequently called for the introduction of Arduino based building energy management with GSM platform which will improve the monitoring and satisfactory sharing of energy purchased by the household based on the amount paid by each of the users of the meter. The AT mega 2560 Microcontroller was used as per the brain of the project. The amount paid in money will be handled to the house owner or landlord. The former, using a cell phone, he or she will send an SMS via GSM. If, the received SMS is Valid it activates the Arduino mega 2560 where calculations of energy bought is done. The respective relays will activates the matching building’s loads. Upon consumption, if the energy paid for is depleted, the system isolates the equivalent consumers. Arduino based building energy management with GSM platform has four relays allocated to each energy user to ensure isolation and re-energizing the user if necessary. The proposed system is able to calculate and isolate 4 houses at once. As the current energy meter doesn’t have any option of controlling at least 2 consumptions, the Arduino based building energy management meter with GSM platform introduced to cover the above gap.