Design of an ARM based prepaid energy meter to control electricity theft

Electricity plays a vital role in the development of our country. In India there are many sectors that have attained rapid developments but only a few developments are made in the electricity board sector. The present billing system in India is monotonous and time consuming. This paper presents a prepaid energy metering system [EMS] to control electricity theft. The energy meter makes use of the global system for mobile communication [GSM] network to incorporate the facility of prepaid metering system and remote load control. A prepaid energy meter is installed in every consumer unit which uses an ARM 7[LPC 2148] microcontroller to calculate the energy consumed and a server unit is maintained at the service provider side. Both the units are well equipped with GSM modem. LCD display is used to display the amount of energy consumed. As the balance becomes zero the power is cut down and the GSM modem will inform the customer to recharge the meter through a SMS. The proposed microcontroller based prepaid energy metering system deals with different aspects of electricity theft to find illegal usage and legal actions against defendant can be taken with the help of this system.