See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/267268487

Design and Building of a Cheap Smart Meter

Conference Paper · October 2013

CITATIONS READS
5 1,825

3 authors, including:

Ahmad Abdel-Majeed Stefan Tenbohlen

Universität Stuttgart Universität Stuttgart
14 PUBLICATIONS   112 CITATIONS    379 PUBLICATIONS   3,937 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Conductivity Measurements View project

Partial Discharge localization in power transformers View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Ahmad Abdel-Majeed on 23 October 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 1

Design and Building of a Cheap Smart Meter

Arne Ellerbrock, Student Member, IEEE, Ahmad Abdel-Majeed, Member, IEEE and Stefan Tenbohlen,
Senior Member, IEEE

Institute of Power Transmission and High Voltage Technology, Pfaffenwaldring 47, 70569 Stuttgart, Universität Stuttgart,
Germany.

Abstract-- This paper shows the design of a cheap smart meter challenging and the need for inexpensive design of smart
which is designed not only to measure the customer’s power meters is needed to fulfill the gap in the required measurement
consumption and generation but also to enable and support the
data.
new operation and control functions in the distribution networks.
It is based on open source hardware (Arduino and Arduino Unfortunately this data is still raw. Smart meters are expensive
Ethernet Board) and offers a plurality of communication
possibilities, like USB, Ethernet, ZigBee or Bluetooth. The smart and not widespread.
meter uses an ADE7753 as converter and saves only the most
important data (voltage, current, frequency, active- and reactive
energy) on a SD-card so that all further calculations can be
II. FUNCTIONAL NEEDS FOR SMART METERS WITH GRID
performed by an external central system. The smart meter can be BENEFITS
used as energy meter (few minutes average) or as power quality
By analyzing the demand of users and State Estimation
meter (10 seconds average).
applications, we designed the smart meter with the following
functions:
I. INTRODUCTION
n Germany 69% of the installed Photovoltaic- (PV) power (1) Low material cost for the hardware and usage of open
I is installed in the low voltage network [1]. This causes source software. Enables the possibility to use it as a
source for numerous measurements of data.
rising power generation in the distribution network, loss in
power quality and reversal of the power flow. (2) Simple design of the connection with plug and play
To be able to handle those things, monitoring and operating function for the meter. This way the smart meter can be
the grid is a necessary task. This way the voltage amplitude used as a normal power meter for connection points,
and frequency can be regulated constantly. but also as an analysis tool for single electric devices.

Nowadays, real-time monitoring and control through state (3) Data collection function over short and long periods of
estimation is a routine task for the transmission system time to learn about own energy consumption behavior
operators (TSOs) due to the availability of measurement data. of the users. It also gives the possibility to verify power
On the other hand distribution system operators (DSOs) are flow calculations and state estimations.
also trying to extend their monitoring and control for medium (4) The function of storing measurement data for at least 12
and low voltage networks in order to enable Smart grid months.
applications. However; distribution network measurements are
(5) Online Data collection for the execution of state
limited due to the lack of measurement devices and sensors
estimations.
there.
(6) Parallel handling of measurements, saving and loading
Through the rollout of smart meters, which are considered as a
meter data so that there are no mistakes through lack of
key component of the future Smart grids, there would be
constant measurements.
enough metering data (voltage, current, active and reactive
power consumption and generation) available at every (7) Various implemented and potential interfaces to load
customer connection point to enable state estimation functions and send the saved and online data to an external
in the low voltage networks. This data can be used for alerting system with a graphical user interface (GUI).
DSO’s for certain power failures or exceeded permissible
(8) Intuitive and flexible GUI to make sure the smart meter
power quality limits. On the other hand, the smart meter could
and its data are useable for several people, especially
be also used as a terminal for demand side management (e.g.
without a technical background.
heat pumps). This rollout seems to be economically
 2

III. HARDWARE DESIGN OF CHEAP SMART METER

The hardware design of the smart meter is based on the open
source micro controller Arduino ADK R3. This board enables
the usage of Android devices to control the smart meter. The
Arduino board is equipped with an Ethernet shield, which has
a micro SD-card slot and an Ethernet interface. The
measurement is done by an ADE 5573 and sent via a Serial
Peripheral Interface (SPI). The result is available via LCD or
an external system.
A. Selection of the microcontroller
The Arduino ADK R3 is an open source microcontroller Figure 2: Functional block diagram of the ADE 5573 [2]

which is easy to configure with different available shields

C. Design of the Metering shield
and libraries. For example the Ethernet shield which offers
an Ethernet interface as well as the possibility of a micro The metering shield designed with the ADE 5573 is used as
SD-card socket. As a memory for measuring data a two a connection between measuring shunts and the Arduino. It
Gigabyte micro SD-card is used, which is enough for is occupied with connection terminals, potential dividers,
approximately two years worth of data. noise reduction electronics, an oscillator and the IC.
Not only the possibility to integrate Android devices but The dimensions of the board are based on the Arduino so
also the quantity of analog and digital in- and outputs is a they can be stacked together and build a stable device.
reason to choose this version of Arduino. The smart meter is
planned as a single phase power meter with the possibility IV. SOFTWARE COMPONENTS OF THE CHEAP SMART METER
to be upgraded as a three phase smart meter. The Arduino
There are two main software components used for the smart
ADK R3 has enough pins to be used as a three phase power
meter. First the programming of the microcontroller, second
meter with the same integrated circuit (IC).
the software for the external system. Both systems are using
internal communication based on a serial interface. For the
two different readouts described above there are different
communication protocols.

A. Communication Protocol of SPI and SD-card

Using the SPI interface of the ADE 5573, the SPI library of
the arduino.cc project is used [3]. The Arduino is using a
loop to constantly check the time of the last read data. Once
every ten minutes it reads the values of the IC using
interruptions on both – IC and Arduinos – side. After
reading the values for:
 Active energy consumption
Figure 1: Microcontroller Arduino ADK R3
 Reactive energy consumption
B. Integrated circuit ADE 5573  Average active power
 Average reactive power
The ADE 5573 from Analog devices is a cheap metering IC  Momentary value of voltage
as shown in figure 2, which is able to use the SPI interface
 Average frequency
for sending metering data.
Those values are written with a time stamp and saved to a
By using RMS-average-values and power integration – text file on the SD-card, using the SD library of the Arduino
which are only interrupted while reading (304 ns) and [4]. This method makes sure that the measured values are
writing (319 ns) data to the SPI – the Arduino can use its not inaccurate by using a delay between the measurements
limited pulsing rate for saving measured data on the SD- of the different values because of the long writing time of
card or communicate with an external device without the SD library.
reducing the accuracy of the measured data.
 3

B. Communication Protocol for the serial port interface VI. OUTLOOK

If an external system is trying to get access to the Arduino Currently, smart phones and tablet computers are becoming
data it has to use the serial port. Depending on which mode more and more popular. This makes readout via Android very
is used, it sends a different numeric code into the serial port important. Since the Arduino has the Android USB interface
buffer. After every loop, the Arduino is trying to read this the next plausible step would be to develop an Android App,
buffer. If the buffer is not empty it decides what to do based which allows the user to visualize his energy consumption.
on the numeric code. On the other side there are processes such as state estimations,
This offers different access permissions for different users used by utility companies. The live Data is especially
or systems, but also an easy way to make sure both sides important because readout via cable is not sufficient. The
know which reading mode is used. If the external system Ethernet board has to be used for online transmissions to
gets permission, there are two different reading modes. The webservers.
first one is sending historical data from the SD-card to the Due to the lack of multitasking possibilities of the Arduino the
external system. The second one is sending instantaneous Agents have to be extended to decide whether personal or
data. industrial usage of measurement data has a higher priority.
Because measuring and saving the data has the highest
priority, the software is developed on an agent basis. Here it
means both modes are aware of the time, what the next REFERENCES
values to measure are, and are interrupted while getting the [1] Abdel-Majeed, Ahmad, Haonan Wang, Martin Braun, and Daniel
next values. Schöllhorn. "Zustandsschätzung in Niederspannungsnetzen mit Hilfe
von Smart Metern." In VDE-Kongress 2012.
C. Visualization by the external system [2] Analog Devices, “Single-Phase Multifunction Metering IC with di/dt
Sensor Interface”, Norwood, U.S.A., 2010.
The external system is based on a graphical user interface [3] Cristian Maglie, “SPI Master library for arduino“, published under GNU
(GUI). This allows the user to easily choose what kind of v2.1, 2010.
[4] SparkFun Electronics, “SD – a slightly more friendly wrapper for
data and – if historical data – which time period he wishes sdfatlib“, published under GNU v3, 2010.
to see. This data may be presented in a table or a graph. [5] Arne Ellerbrock, Jörn Loviscach; “Das Stromnetz”; c’t magazin
The interface used here is a minor problem, because USB, 02/2010.
Ethernet and Bluetooth can be used as a serial port
communication.

V. CONCLUSION
Low cost for smart meters are a major requirement. The
described example costs less than 100€. This includes all
measurement and connection hardware. Compared to free
buyable products this is around 1/3 of the price [5], so that the
requirement (1) can be considered as fulfilled.
Thanks to the internal memory of the Arduino the program
automatically runs after getting power. This enables the in
requirement (2) described plug and play functionality. Only
the software of the external system has to be synchronized with
the hardware.
The requirements (3) to (6) and (8) are fulfilled through
interrupt and agent based software programming. Due to the
usage of serial ports the interface being used is not determined,
as specified by the requirement (7). Depending on the use case
the chosen communication is wired or non-wired.
The smart meter achieves all requirements mentioned in
section 2, which are recorded for customer usage and
generation as well as to enable state estimation functions in the
low voltage networks. Since these requirements are fulfilled
the smart meter can be considered as suitable.

View publication stats