LIST OF CONTENT

1.0 INTRODUCTION

2.0 PROBLEM STATEMENT

3.0 AIM OF RESEARCH

4.0 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

5.0 RESEARCH QUESTION

6.0 SCOPE OF RESEARCH

7.0 RESEARCH METHOLOGY

8.0 REFFERENCE
RESEARCH TITLE : A STUDY ON THE ADVANTAGES OF MONITORING ELECTRIC
USAGE USING SMART METER

KEYWORDS

1.ADVANTAGES

2.ELECTRIC

3.SMART METER

INTRODUCTION

Electricity has become an essential part of contemporary life, energizing lights, appliances,
heat, air conditioning, televisions, telephones, computers, and many other modern
conveniences. An electric meter, monitored by your electric utility company, is mounted
where the electricity enters your house. The main panel is usually right next to or under the
meter. This is the central distribution point for the electrical circuits that run to lights,
receptacles, and appliances throughout the house. A circuit, by definition, is a circular
journey that begins and ends at the same place, and this is essentially how electricity works.
Current begins at a power source, powers the appliance or device along the circuit, and then
returns to the power source. Any interruption in this path will render the circuit dead.

In the past decade, we always read about the critics and complain from the consumer
about the accuracy in monitoring the electric usage from the TENAGA NASIONAL BERHAD
(TNB). Some consumer also put a question on why the electric bill is different every month
even with the same number of user in the household. This prove that the conventional
monitoring system need to be improve and TNB need to invest in term of money or idea in
order to solve this problem. The current monitoring system is using a meter for measuring
the electric usage in residential and commercial buildings, that generally referred to as
electricity meters” that has been used in the building. (Ridenour, R.E. and Swanson ,2001)

According to Weiss, M. Helfenstein (2012) stated that the global adoption of smart meters
that measure and communicate the consumption of residential electricity results in the
growth of new energy efficiency facilities. Nowadays, there are a lot of innovation and
invention born that generally help in improving our daily life. Same goes to the electricity
devices where the smart meter was introduced, that generally can help in improving the
monitoring the usage of electric by users.
PROBLEM STATEMENT

In these modern day, there are a lots of new electrical devices was introduced. The
existence of this new devices is generally because of the desire from the human to create
the better way of life. One of the electric device that can be consider as one of the main
requirement in daily life is air conditioner. As we can see, the demand of this devices is
increase from day to day. In today's world of rapidly escalating energy prices, energy costs
associated with operating such basic home appliances as a furnace, an air conditioner and a
hot water heater have become extremely significant expenses for a homeowner. While the
homeowner may attempt to budget for these energy expenses, the resulting energy bills do
not arrive until after the energy has been consumed. At this time it is too late to attempt to
adjust energy consumption so as to conserve energy. Further it is difficult to judge the
effectiveness of energy conservation attempts as one cannot obtain immediate feedback
regarding the attempts. (Fischer, C. Energy Efficiency, 2008 )

Nowadays, TNB receive a lot critism and complain about the services that they offered to
the Malaysian consumers. They always put a question on why their electric bills charge is
different every month, more worse is when the electric bills is increase every month. One of
the problem of why consumer have to pay more for their electric bills is because they cannot
monitor the electric usage in a month. This is one of the TNB responsibility in order to make
sure that their customer have right to monitor the electric usage. The present monitor meter
scheme only measures complete consumption and does not provide data as to when the
energy was consumed (Henryson, J., Håkansson, T. and Pyrko, J., 2000).

Beside that, the current monitoring system that was applied by TENAGA NASIONAL
BERHAD have problem such some user did not receive the bill receipt that should be sent to
them by the end of every month. This traditional method generally require the electric utility
send a field operator to consumer home to check every meter in the area it serves.Sometime
the bills are not send to the house or it might have been misplaced or the bill are not been
mailed that generally may leads to the late payment of the electric bills. (Dobson, J.K. and
Griffin, J.A., 2009)

Therefore, the represent of smart meter generally can help the users to check their electric
bills. Thus this will lead the TNB system to be more convenient and user friendly. In addition,
it will be a huge move from TNB in giving the electric users to monitor their real-time
electrical energy usage in addition with automated tariff calculation that will help people to
monitor their usage and avoid them from using it exceeding their budget. This will have a
very useful effect on our community because they can effectively handle their monthly cash
flow and it also helps to reduce overdue payment for electrical energy, which is generally
caused by over-budget use (Garay, J. et al, 2012)
AIM OF RESEARCH

The aim of this research is to determine the benefit of using smart meter in TENAGA
NATIONAL BERHAD (TNB) in monitoring electric usage in malaysia

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

1. To build an energy usage monitoring system that give real-time monitoring of power
consumption and tariff calculation through new smart meter devices

2. To identify the weakness of the current monitoring system that was apply by TENAGA
NATIONAL BERHAD

3. To overcome the unstable charge on electric bill problem

RESEARCH QUESTION

There are three research questions in order to achieve research objectives:

1. How the accuracy for the smart meter to read the electric usage ?

2. How much the cost to install the smart meter ?

3. How weakness the current monitoring system that was apply by TNB nowadays ?

SCOPE OF RESEARCH

The scope of this research focused on a house at Putrajaya. According to TENAGA

NATIONAL BERHAD website stated that the smart meter is already been introduced in early
2014. So, in order to achieve the objectives for this research, discussion and questionnaire
will be carried out time to time.
RESEARCH METHOLOGY

For this proposal, there are few stage that are done in order to get all the researcher
information.

Stage 1 (Topic Selection & Research Proposal)

First of all, a wide area topic will be studied in order to get the topic for the research. This
proposal are concentrated on low cost houses and varies income groups are been taken.
The information are taken from varies sources and many relevant topic are been listed.
Therefore, the problem and issues that arisen from certain topic are been analyse and at last
the researched topic is then formulated. After literature review on topic and information on
topic are taken, the objectives will be formulated from the problem that occurs before. The
scope of this proposal is been narrow down to Putrajaya area. Then methodology study is
outlined and the tentative study is identified as guideline for study progress.

Stage 2 (Data Collections)

In order to get the valuable information for this proposal, all the information contained in this
proposal is mainly derived from two sources. These methods were used to gather the
required information;

Primary Sources

The primary sources are referring to the data and information, which does not exist but it
actually erected by the author who collect it thought interviews and observation. However the
purpose of this study, the data was retrieved as follow:

a) Questionnaires

The questionnaires question is made from all the references that been list at the list of
references page, it is distribute around Putrajaya, where it is distribute to the lower income
group, intermediate income group and also to higher income group.

b) Interview

Interview and observation also is done in order to get the data for this study, whereby
government bodies and also company with the various income group are been interview.
Secondary Sources

A secondary sources consists of literature review material which taken from sources such as
books, journals, seminar papers, new papers, magazine and serve from internet. For the
purpose of this study, the secondary sources were based on the following sources:

a) Literature Review

Literature is mainly was retrieved though printed materials such as text books, seminar
papers, new paper articles of local daily, magazines, journals and other material related for
this proposal topic. All these information help to gather and digest all information needed in
preparation of this study. Details of books and magazines such as title, publisher, date of
publishing and the author can be referred through the reference section. References were
also based on printed information such as related books, magazines, documents, paper
works among together.

b) Internet

Due to the global and worldwide of information technology, it is important to gathered some
useful information and data through the internet services. This can help us to gather more
information that we need.

Stage 3 (Paper Writing & Conclusion)

It is formed according to the analysis made before, the final stage involved assimilation of
finding. Finding is the concluded and some recommendation is made for further study.
REFFERENCE

Ridenour, R.E. and Swanson, S., Atos Origin IT Services Inc, 2001. Electricity meter. U.S.
Patent 6,232,885.

Weiss, M., Helfenstein, A., Mattern, F. and Staake, T., 2012, March. Leveraging smart meter
data to recognize home appliances. In 2012 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive
Computing and Communications (pp. 190-197). IEEE.

Fischer, C. Energy Efficiency (2008) 1: 79. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-008-9009-7

Henryson, J., Håkansson, T. and Pyrko, J., 2000. Energy efficiency in buildings through
information–Swedish perspective. Energy policy, 28(3), pp.169-180.

Dobson, J.K. and Griffin, J.A., 2009. Conservation effect of immediate electricity cost
feedback on residential consumption behavior. Proceedings of the 7th ACEEE summer
study on energy efficiency in buildings, 2.

Garay, J. and Lindholm, P., 2012, August. Statistics on the energy bill: better control for the
customer. In Proceedings of the seventh international energy program evaluation
conference: Energy program evaluation: Uses, methods, and results (pp. 499-504).