IMPROVING INTELLIGENT WIRELESS SENSOR FOR PREPAID METER BYPASS CONTROL

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