A ZigBee based reliable and efficient power metering system for energy management and controlling

Abstract

Planning and management of energy are among the most important topics nowadays due to the fact that the existing power plants and systems fail to satisfy the energy demand and keep up with the daily developing technologies. To maintain the energy need of the existing systems, researchers are aiming to improve usage and savings of available resources and systems. For example, power metering system has been proposed to decrease the energy wasting. The purpose of this system can be explained as limiting the energy consumption in some cases like stand-by or while switching programs or devices which the system is installed on. By blocking the unnecessary consumption of energy, profits and savings are targeted. In this work, a new power meter system based on ZigBee technology is designed and implemented to obtain a more efficient structure and reduce the number of disadvantages of the existing technologies. In SmartPlug, the MCU was moved into the plug from outer environment and shifting the host to a spectator to eliminate user based faults and/or problems. Moreover, the proposed structure enhances the safety by detecting the sudden voltage fluctuations and preventing the possible damages of end-devices. In addition to these, we prove that cutting of stand-by powers and limiting the energy consumption by arranging the working hours of devices based on energy unit prices provide efficient, right and cheap usage of the energy.