IMPROVING INTELLIGENT WIRELESS SENSOR FOR PREPAID METER BYPASS CONTROL
High quality prepaid meters
are used to measure the amount of electricity supplied to a residential or
commercial building. When the meter is tampered or bypassed, it will either
stop functioning, under-register or even stop registering the amount of electricity
been consumed. This is usually done by the consumers to avoid paying for the
electricity that they use. Bypass causes huge revenue losses, affects our economy
and development and affects lives and properties through fire outbreak, injury
or even death by electrocution. It has being the major concern of the transmission and
distribution losses in the supply of electricity.
Due to poor maintenance, poor infrastructure, irregular regulation and monitoring of meters and so on by Nigerian
Electricity Power Authority (NEPA), the national power grid was sold and
a digital meter system was introduced against analog meters. Yet, Power
Distribution Companies are still afraid to supply prepaid meter rather they
prefer to bill their consumers based on estimation. They increase their tariff
rate, increase cost of acquiring the digital meter and delay its installation
may be to discourage people from getting prepaid meter or to remain in business. I believe this is because prepaid meters are still being bypassed upon
its implementation in the system.
Energy theft through illegal
connection
or bypass are being done using different techniques in Nigeria, that’s why
the Federal Government through the Minister of Power, Works and Housing with
some power distributors deployed a meter bypass trackers in order to reveal the
culprits and have them punished. These trackers alone could not provide 100 percent
protection. Therefore, to solve these problems, this project proposed for an intelligent
wireless sensor for meter bypass control.
The aim and objective of the
newly improved intelligent wireless sensor for meter bypass control is for computerization
of the prepaid metering system and to make electricity meter more sensitive to any bypass technique
which will help in the provision of constant electricity in Nigeria. The intelligent
wireless sensor for meter bypass control will acquire information related to
the bypass techniques and activate a preventive measure as it notifies the
authority using wireless sensor network (WSN).
Through WSN, all meters
are network nodes to harvest information, share information and give the sensor
node long lifetime energy. In this idea,
we propose an intelligent algorithm to detect and send information when the
meter is without load and there is power interruption, when the energy energy elapses
and electricity is still available in the power line and so on.
The system can monitor electrical
parameters of the load such as voltage and current and subsequently calculates the
power consumed. The novelty of this system is the implementation of the
controlling mechanism of load in different ways. The developed system is a
low-cost and flexible in operation and thus can save the load and the prepaid
meter from surge.
For more information on this project idea, feel free to call: +234803909203 or email: abldesigns@yahoo.com
