In developing countries like India, power theft is one of the most prevalent issues which not

only cause economic losses but also irregular supply of electricity. It hampers functioning of
industries and factories, due to shortage of power supplied to them. It causes shortage of power
supply to homes. It leads to loss of revenue by Government as individual enterprises may opt to
install their own power generators, increases corruption in form of bribes and many more. Ultimately
it is the country’s economy which suffers along with the country’s political reputation.

Ways of Power Theft

Power Tapping: Often power theft is done during transmission by illegal tapping of the
power lines to divert the power to the required destinations. It is also done by illegal connections to
the power grid stations, which are cut at the time of billing.

Meter fraud: In many areas where manual reading of the meter is done, the person is often
bribed to give false readings and thus the amount paid is for lesser amount of power compared to the
power actually consumed. Also meters are tampered by obstructing the motion of the disk (usually
electro mechanical consists of slowly spinning disks to record the power consumed)

Electric meters can be manipulated, thus causing them to stop, under-register or even
bypassing the meter. Consumers, who are tamper with electric meter, effectively use power without
paying for it. This theft or fraud can be dangerous as well as dishonest. Electric meter security is
looked upon as major issue in many countries today.

A household power low voltage saving devices has recently received a lot of attention from
both consumers and manufacturers. It is generally used in residential homes to save energy and to
reduce electricity bills. It is a small device which is to be plugged in any of the AC sockets in the
house (Mostly near Energy Meter). Moreover, some of the companies claim that their power savers
save up to 40% of the energy.

A Power regulator is a device which plugs in series to power. Apparently just by keeping the
device connected it will immediately control and stabilize power usages. This system can claims
savings between 20% and 30%. It is known that the electricity that comes to our homes will not stable
in nature. There are many fluctuations, raise and falls, and surges/Spikes in this current. This unstable
current cannot be used by any of the household appliances. Moreover, the fluctuating current wastes
the electric current from the circuit by converting electrical energy into heat energy. This heat energy
not only gets wasted to the atmosphere, but also harms the appliances and wiring circuit.

Our aim of project is to restrict a power theft by implementing a high voltage through the
transmission line which will be distributed by a sub-station, by changing a tapps of transformers
randomly. further this high voltage used by consumer through our system in which we regulate the
voltage across the load upto a set limit. Those consumer who are running their electrical devices
through illegal hooking or energy meter bypassing can be definitely suffer by this high voltage,
which may cause damages to the running devices.
In our project we are uses a power electronics device like TRIAC to control the power. Use of power
electronics reduces the mechanical arching and fast reaction time. In addition to this we also make a
provision for Under/Over voltage protection, which doesn’t have any existing Energy Meters.

In addition to this, our system enables the Electricity Department to read the meter readings regularly

without the person visiting each house. This can be achieved by the use of microcontroller unit that

continuously monitors and records the Energy Meter readings in its permanent (non-volatile) memory

location. This system also makes use of a wireless modem for remote monitoring and control of

Energy Meter.

The Microcontroller based system continuously records the readings and the live meter

reading can be sent to the Electricity department on request. This system also can be used to

disconnect the power supply to the house in case of non-payment of electricity bills. A dedicated

wireless modem is required for each energy meter.

In our project we interface meter to PC which stores all the data and calculate exact billing

amount and send it to microcontroller. The exact billing amount will further shown on LCD, if the

consumer not pay the bill within a stipulated period , the PC will automatically disconnect the power

supply of consumer.
OPERATION OF BLOCK DIAGRAM

In the above block the main aim is to control and keep balance the voltage across load.

Initially controller check the incoming voltage coming from line with the help of ADC (analog to

digital converter) present inside the Microcontroller. Our aim is to control a +ve as well as –ve

half cycle of incoming AC for that a Firing angle control method is used. For controlling a firing

angle of any AC voltage it is necessary to monitor every +ve/-ve half cycles, hence a Sine Wave

Cycle Monitor(Zero Crossing Detector) block is used in our project, which informs a controller

about start point of every cycle. Once controller knows the voltage across the load and signals

from sine wave cycle monitor, controller calculate the firing angle and gives firing pulse to the AC

to AC converter in which a static switch formed by a SCR/TRIAC is used. Static switch can

operated on high voltage and high frequency as compare to the mechanical switches like relay. The

output of AC to AC converter is further give to Reactor which is nothing but a type of single core

step-up transformer.(220v to 300v transformer is used in our project), which gives a 220v output at

140vAC input. The output of 220v is further used by a various load. The voltage across load is

measured by the controller with the help of Potential Transformer (PT). Potential transformer is

used to step down the voltage across the load to be measure and rectified to DC, because

microcontroller can read a voltage upto 5vdc only. In our project we are using a Relay for tripping

the input voltage in case of very high voltage and low voltage which is beyond control-able

limits. The relay used in our project is of 12 volts and controller can give maximum of 5v, hence

it is necessary to amplify the 5v to 12v for which a Driver circuit is used.

Microcontroller requires a 5vDC to work, and same will be generated with the help of

Power Supply which comprises of a Step down transformer, rectifier, filter and regulator.

Transformer step down the 220vAC to 12vAC, rectifier and filter converts this 12vAC to

12vDC, and regulator converts a 12vDC to a constant of 5vDC.

ADVANTAGES
1. To save electric power.
2. To reduce electricity bill.
3. It gives regulated power supply.
4. Low maintenance.
APPLICATIONS
This energy meter system is used for

1. Residential purpose.
2. Commercial purpose.
3. Industrial purpose.
4. Small scale industries.