Power Line Communication based Current Theft with Smart Home Automation

Countries over the world facing endemic electrical energy shortages have an added bane of power theft. Power shortages have a very detrimental effect on the overall economic growth of the country. This project has been developed as a smart meter that would make an effort to curb power theft prevailing in the distribution segment of power systems with the added benefit of detection of current overload and a notification via SMS to the main station indicating the same. Applications such as smart billing and home automation are features of this project. Overloads due to power theft detected, automate an SMS generation program that alerts concerned authorities. Consumer usage units for billing can be checked with just an SMS. Non-payment of dues by individual households may enable authorities to shut down power supply to the defaulting consumer from source. Devices can be switched ON/OFF by the user with a single SMS. Concepts of power line communication (PLC) and GSM modules along with controllers such as PIC and Arduino controllers have been used as the basis and support structure to this project.