2011 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies India

Remote Detection of Illegal Electricity Usage Employing Smart Energy Meter A Current Based Technique
Suman Deb#1,Pankaj Kumar Bhowmik #2,Arik Paul#
3

Deptt. of Electrical Engg National Institute of Technology,Silchar Assam,Pin: 788010 INDIA 1 sumandeb2010@rediffmail.com, 2bhowmikpankaj@gmail.com, 3arik.pl@rediffmail.com

Abstract At present, illegal usage of electricity is a serious

problem facing the power industry in many countries. An efficacious and worthwhile solution to counteract this problem can be realized by using: a) already existing electrical network for communication i.e. PLC(Power Line communication) b) smart metering system. In the prototype of detection system presented in this paper, test signal at high frequency is transmitted through the network and software at suppliers end compares data with reference data. Based on the outcome of this comparison, it can remotely be detected if there is any illegal electricity usage or not. The study documented in this paper puts forward a new and unprecedented currentbased technique to tackle the problem of illegal electricity usage. This paper reveals the existence of very small line current during the detection test which proves to be the key to unlock the problem of illegal electricity usage detection. Keywords-smart energy meter,line inductance, disconnection, illegal node, critical load I . INTRODUCTION Saving and using energy more efficiently is gradually gaining more and more prominence as the availability of energy is decreasing. A major problem faced in power distribution today is the illegal usage of electricity. It is a serious problem in many countries, especially in the developing and the underdeveloped nations such as those of the Indian subcontinent .Despite all efforts the rate of electricity theft in Turkey increased from 14.4 percent in 17.7 percent from 2008 to 2009, recent data from Turkish Electricity Distribution Company has shown. Pakistan loses Rs.80 billion annually on account of electricity theft [3]. Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) and Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (HESCO) have been facing the worst state of electricity theft. In HESCO , line losses due to theft figure more than 40 % with KESC competing the figure closely[4].In India pilferage load

(power theft) is responsible for the disappearance of 29% of the electricity generated. In energy terms this amounts to 613.87 million units/ day[5]. In such usage, user makes an illegal connection to electricity grid and his/ her connection doesnt pass through a meter, so without paying any electric bill he or she can use energy. Such illegal usage of electricity has two major disadvantages. At first, from an economic point of view this usage of electricity destroys suppliers budget, because they provide energy to many nodes without any profit return. Another major problem confronted by the energy regulatory boards is its technological disadvantage. Electrical grid design for distribution side is planned and prepared taking into consideration specific volume of consumers and their energy demands. According to strategic planning, any grid can provide specific kilowatt-hours of energy for consumers and such illegal usage of electricity can cause a critical technical problem for suppliers, and hence planning of national energy may be difficult in the case of unrecorded consumption, ultimately resulting in the inefficient operation of the power system. To counteract this problem a smart metering system can serve the purpose of detecting the illegal electricity guzzling in demand side. A smart metering system includes a smart meter, communication infrastructure, and control devices. Smart meter is an advanced form of energy meter which can collect accurate readings of energy consumption and feedback additional information to the utility company (as well as consumers) in contrast to a conventional energy meter.

978-1-4673-0315-6/11/$26.002011 IEEE

2011 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies India

Figure.1 shows an architectural difference of a simple energy meter and a smart meter. A smart energy meter has the capability of real-time registration of electricity usage and possibly electricity generated, offering the feature of reading the meter both remotely as well as locally. Smart meters can communicate bi-directionally and execute control commands remotely as well as locally. The main aim of this work is to provide a solution to the problem of illegal electricity usage , similar to those which have been performed earlier in this direction. II. BENEFITS OF SMART METERING RELATED TO ENERGY SAVINGS Under normal conditions, when the consumers are connected to the power supply via the smart energy meter, the benefits associated with smart metering are [6]: Remote collection of meter data facilitates the minimization of data collection cost, eliminates estimated bills and provides accurate data for usage information on bills. Smart meters will provide consumers with much more elaborate information on their energy usage, either on their bills, via the internet or directly within their homes, or a combination of all of these. Signals from the smart metering system can be used as a tool to control energy management processes within the property, allowing further cost reduction. Remote management of meters will remove the difficulty of meter operators to physically visit meters and eliminate problems associated with gaining access to meters. It also helps with remote switch-on/off functionality to reduce safety risks and energy consumption on unused premises. III. DETECTION OF ILLEGAL ELECTRICITY USAGE A. Ways of illegal electricity usage In the distribution side of power system, illegal usage of electricity may happen in following ways [7]: 1) A consumer can use some mechanical objects to retard or prevent the revolution of disc of a meter, so the disc speed is reduced and hence the recorded energy is less than the actual value. 2) A consumer can change the electromagnetic field of the current coils (as we know, the mechanical energy meter is based on the electromagnetic field) with the help of a fixed magnet, thereby reducing the energy consumption recorded. 3) By using the external phase before meter terminals, consumers can subscribe free energy without any record.

4) Illegal users can switch the energy cables at the meter connector box to prevent the flow of current through the current coil of the meter, so the meter does not record the energy consumption. In countries like India, illegal users steal electricity directly from the main power line of street by using hook-like electrical connector to supply power to various electrical appliances. B. New method proposed for detecting an illegal node The new method described in this paper follows a current based approach using one of the features of smart energy metering system. Figure 2 depicts the basic functional elements of a smart energy meter.

As can be seen in Fig. 2, smart energy meter provides consumers with more features than just automatic meter reading. One unit of smart meter functions as conventional AMR- this unit indicates energy consumption based on mechanical or digital measurement. Mechanical measurement is based on the principle of rotation of disc caused by the interaction of two electromagnetic fields. In mechanical AMR a sensor senses the rotation of disc and generates digital pulse to be transmitted to the microcontroller unit. A counter in the microcontroller keeps a count of the number of rotations of the disc, thereby measures the number of units of energy consumed. In digital AMR the energy meter IC calculates units of energy consumed based on voltage and current data received from CT and PT.As mentioned earlier, remote switch ON/OFF functionality is possible with the help of relayanother part of smart meter, the control command being sent from energy provider via power line carrier signal.

2011 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies India

C. Operation In this method, power line characteristic is used to determine the presence of illegal node. Table 1: Low Voltage Power Line Characteristics [8] Reactance /Km (50 Hz) 0.30 0.28 0.10 Resistance /Km (+20C) 1.06 0.64 0.87 Al/Fe mm 25.0 50.0 35.0 Kv 0.4 0.4 0.4 Line OHDL* OHDL* OHDL*

*Over-Head Distribution Line

Table 1 shows that the reactance of over head power line is negligible at 50 Hz. In case of short line, the line capacitance is not appreciable.In high frequency, the capacitive reactance (= 1/ ) becomes negligibly small and so, the line acts only as an inductor [9][10][11] [12].

Figure 4 is the circuit representation of the considered grid with three energy meters, the values of inductance between two consecutive nodes being for 10m cable and the end grid impedance as 1k. At first we transmit 2V signal at 150 kHz to grid, all loads being remotely disconnected from main voltage by receiving the disconnection command from server. The smart meter installed at distribution transformer should have the ability to read the current flowing through the distribution line when test signaling is being done. Using this smart meter, the value of the current flowing through the line during the test signaling period is measured and serves as the reference value. This reference value is noted at the time of grid installation and stored in the database. The smart meter installed at the distribution transformer should be able to measure current flowing in grid during detection test. In this detection method, the prime utility of this smart meter is measuring the line current during detection test. The smart energy meters utilized in our detection scheme must have the feature of allowing their ground connections switched ON/OFF through remotely generated command signals. The advantage of this feature is that it facilitates better comparison of current values obtained during detection tests with the reference one.

Figure 3: Basic Low Voltage Grid In the above figure, distribution line is shown as series of lumped inductors and consumers load as impedance. After installation of smart energy meter in low voltage grid, supplier sends special command signal to smart energy metering system to disconnect the consumers load from the distribution line, so we have only inductive distribution line. Now, in grid, if we have specific impedance at its end, a little current flows in the mesh. Because of energy meter disconnection, this current has relation only with end grid impedance. In this method, for distribution line characteristic record, we send 2V signal at 150kHz instead of 220V signal at 50Hz. Since consumer loads have been disconnected, this high frequency signal transmission has no side effect. At 150kHz, the line has considerable impedance (=2 L) per metre. Line impedance at this frequency must be approximately 1 / m. Consider a grid with three energy meters, each energy meter connected to another energy meter with 10m cable.

2011 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies India

Figure 6 : Line Current v/s load impedance at illegal node

plot

During detection test, the first step is to switch OFF the ground connections of the smart energy meters as well as disconnect their respective loads from main line with the help of remotely generated command signals as shown in Figure 6. Now, 2V test signal at 150kHz is transmitted through the isolated line. The resulting line current is easily measured by the central smart energy meter. The measured value is compared with the reference value obtained at the time of grid installation. If there is no illegal node, both values are measured to be same. Now, by considering an illegal node to be present between L2 and L3, we(using NI LABVIEW) plot a graph between RMS values of line current(simulated using NI MULTISIM) during test period v/s corresponding values of load impedance(R in figure 5) at illegal node. Here, the reference value is simulated to be 67.498 nanoAmps. The effectiveness of our current based approach in detecting the presence of illegal node is evident from the graph (shown in figure 6) due to the presence of steep downward sloping region .As a result, there is a drastic fall in the value of line current for a very small change in the value of impedance at illegal node. This results in a remarkable difference between the reference value and the observed value, thereby, making it easier for the software at the supplier control room to detect illegal usage. However, during simulation of the RMS line current values, it was observed that for a very small value of 0.02285 illegal load impedance, the line current came out to be same as the reference value, thereby making it impossible to detect the presence of illegal load around this value. This value can be termed as critical load. But, owing to the extreme smallness of this impedance value in power system, this anomaly has negligible effect in reducing the practical effectiveness of this method.

In our second case, referring to figure 7, an illegal node is placed between L1 and L2. Following detection procedure as above, we obtain the same reference value as earlier. Following graph is obtained from the simulated values:

The graph for this case features presence of similar steep downward sloping region. The critical load for this position of illegal node is 0.028090 - small enough to be neglected. Hence, this method is effective irrespective of the position of illegal node in the grid. IV. CONCLUSION By using smart meter and basic software for monitoring the low voltage grid, energy supplier can monitor their grid easily and find the presence of illegal energy usage in their grid if this problem existed using line current as the detection parameter.

2011 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies India

V. REFERENCES
[1] S.S.S.R.Depuru, L.Wang, V.Devabhaktuni,N.Gudi, Smart Meters for Power Grid- Challenges,Issues,Advantages and Status , 2011 IEEE [2] R.V.Gerwen, S.Jaarsma,R.Wilhite, Smart Metering, http://www.leonardo-energy.org [3] http://www.khaleejtimes.com ,5 April 2007. [4] http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/13May-2010/Govt.-fails-to-control-power-theft [5] Revolutionary Concept of Power Management , slide from http://www.google.com [6] J.C.P.Kester, M.J.G.Burgos, J.Parsons Smart Metering Guide-Energy Saving and the Customer Edition 2010 p.7,8,9. [7] H. Cavdar, A solution to remote detection of illegal Electricity usage via power line communications, IEEE Trans. Power delivery, vol. 19,N). 4, October 2004. [8] E. Lakrvi, and E. J. Holmes Electricity distribution network design , p. 37 [9] M. Tanaka, High frequency noise power spectrum, impedance and transmission loss of power line in Japan on intrabuilding power line communication), 1988 IEEE [10] M. Tanaka, Transmission characteristics of a power line used for data communications at high frequencies, 1989 IEEE [11] M. P. Sanders, Power line carrier channel & application consideration for transmission line relaying, Pulsar technologies M. P. Sanders, Power line carrier channel & application consideration for transmission line relaying, Pulsar technologies Inc. [12] W. Sado, and J. Kunicki Personal communication on residential power line assessment of channel parameters , IEEE July 2006 /

VI. BIOGRAPHY

Mr Suman Deb was born on 30.08.1989. He is at present pursuing B.Tech in Electrical Engg . from National Institute of Teechnology, Silchar (India). His research interests are in digital electronics, computer aided power systems and energy management

Mr Pankaj Kr. Bhowmik was born on 21.04.1990. He is at present pursuuing B.Tech in Electrical Engg. from National Institute of Technology,Silchar (India).His research interests are in control system , power systems, renewable energy resources, Instrumentation, Signal Processing

Mr Arik Paul was born on 21.09.1991. He is at present pursuing B.Tech in Electrical Engg. from National Institut of Technology, Silchar (India). His research interests are in power electronics , smart grid technology and energy management.