OSS for energy Conservation

Jogi Jacob, Technical Lead

Introduction

OSS as the open source software is popularly known had come up long age in the early 20th
century, but its potential is far from being fully utilized. Keeping this in mind, we have come up
with a solution that can be easily accessible to millions at a time and will also help in conserving
energy. As the populace of the world increases, the amount of energy used (and wasted even!)
increases correspondingly. This is proving to be drastically fatal for our environment. The energy
resource that is fast becoming the primary requisite is electricity. Electricity plays a vital role in
our lives as it is needed for an innumerable and wide range of activities from charging personal
devices to controlling immediate surrounding atmosphere (heaters/air-conditioners) to running
trains. Man is completely surrounded by this resource and a life without electricity is
unimaginable. Despite this most people have a superfluous attitude towards the conservation of
electricity. The concept of energy conservation is new to most of the people and hence, sadly,
wastage of electricity is seen everywhere around too. This made us think about engineering a
device that would help in conserving energy in addition to meeting the requirements of the
society.

Present problem

Electricity bills have been reaching individuals since time immemorial, what has changed (and
still needs to be changed) is the method and the channel through which the electricity bill reaches
the individual. The earliest channel to send the electricity bills was too the then efficient and
reliable postal system. But as time passed on, many disadvantages of this system surfaced up.
Some of them being:
 Time - the arrival of mails via train’s needs a lot of time so the billing company had to
ensure that the bills are dispatched well in advance even allowing for possible delays.
 Effort - being a completely manual system, a lot of human effort is required, from
collecting the meter readings to sending them to the company and then to transport the
bill back to the customer. Since manual labor is hard to find, this method proved to be
cumbersome over time.
 Efficiency - the efficiency of these systems was totally dependent on the timely arrival
and departure of the trains (and other modes of transport, if any).
  Speed - the speed of these systems was not up to the mark due to many various factors
like efficiency, effort, time etc.

The advent of the electronic mailing system resolved most of the above problems, but at the
same time new disadvantages surfaced., The major disadvantage being the problem of false
accounts, hacking and frauds. Hence to overcome all of the above problems, we came up with
the concept of "Tejasvita". A new-age billing concept based on the Open Source Software. Being
open source, the individual users can program its interface as per their individual preferences. It
is a superior technology to both postal and mailing systems as it is efficient and consumes less of
time and effort than what would have been usually required.

Project concept

As we said before the energy conception in our country is increasing day by day. By the arrival
of electric stove an extra peak time of 2 hours had increased in our country. As these are going
here we are facing water problem etc. This is a directly proportional process i.e. as the technical
development increases we are contributing ourselves a bit to the energy crisis and also we have
green technologies to solve this problem but still our technical intelligence can be a solution to
this crisis we are developing to technology. If this technology can help us or assist us to save
energy it will be better than anything. The technology may reach common man after a long time
of its invention, but why don't we use existing technology to help common man to save his
money and contribute to energy conservation. The development starts when common man
develops. When we get our electricity bill in our hand. We get shocked and wish to appoint
person to watch over the electric usage. Small mistakes and carelessness made by us makes us to
pay bill for it. The human nature itself includes the property. So we are effectively appointing a
combination embedded system, software, and severs to do this duty or to assist us. The project
needs three important components

1. An embedded device and software for it

2. A communication link between embedded system and KSEB
3. A server and a software at KSEB

 The embedded software is used to monitor the devices used in the home. It also supports
the owner to control the energy usage

 The communication link between the monitoring system and KSEB transfer the
information about consumption of electricity as well as misuse of electricity etc.
  A server is maintained at the KSEB to manipulate the consumer details and helps in
creating bill etc.

Implementation

This can be implemented easily using available open source software’s and hardware’s. As I said
before we have three parts to be developed

1. Viscometer

The embedded system can be named as visiometer because it gives us a visual and analytical
information about the energy consumption. It has two duties
1.1 energy monitoring
This part is where we need to integrate all existing measuring and controlling devices using
visiometer. It must monitor the usage of electricity, i.e. which device is consuming more power,
when are the peak times in your house etc. by doing this. Software can offer suggestions to
owner to conserve energy. This is also can be used to inform the owner by any means like alarm
or message on screen. The manipulation of power supply to each device. For e.g. A fridge be
switched of for one hour after it has been used through 3 hours (these are assumptions not actual
values) and it will be also help to alarm the owner when a device is consuming unusual amount
of power etc.

1.2 Energy Auditing

The energy auditing is the next duty of the device which is to audit the energy usage. The
energy auditing can be implemented by this one the report will be sent to the KSEB server
through communication medium.

1.3 communicating data

The device must send relevant data through communication phase to server e.g. No of units of
energy consumption etc
2. Communication

The device must be capable of effectively communication to user and server. To communicate
with the user mobile is a very good option. So that he can control the visiometer with blue tooth
and he receives a warning message from visiometer if something goes wrong. The
communication medium between server and device is optional

3. Server

A server must be maintained at the KSEB office to manipulate data

Device specifications

1. Raspberry Pi

Target price: US$ 35

SoC BCM2835, Broad com(CPU , GPU, DSP, SDRAM and single USB
support)

CPU 700 MHz ARM1176JZF-S core ( ARM11 family, ARMv6 instruction set)

GPU Broadcom VideoCore IV @ 250 Mhz, OpenGL ES 2.0(24 GFLOPS)

Memory(SDRAM) 512 MB (shared with GPU) as of 15 October 2012

:

USB 2.0 ports: 2 (via the built in integrated 3-port USB hub)

Video input: A CSI input connector allows for the connection of a RPF designed camera
 module

2. Screen

 HD Monitor,
 LED Monitor,
 Touch Screen Monitor
 Screen Diagonal: 60 cm
 Screen Size: 23.6 inches
 Max Resolution: 1,920 x 1,080 Pixel
 Aspect Ratio: 16:9 /
 Response Time: 2 ms
 Contrast Ratio (dynamic): 5,000,000:1
 Contrast Ratio (typical): 1,000:1
 Brightness: 300 cd/m² /
 Full HD
 LCD 

Impact on society

The existing system is a manually operated one which increases the time consumed and also the
error rate. While the effort consuming task of individually visiting homes to take meter readings
was overcome by the system of electronically mailing the bill, the problem of hackers, password
thief and loss of messages/bills still existed.

The implementation of this system will eliminate even that problem. Individuals can monitor
their daily electricity consumption with unprecedented ease and take effective measures to
prevent unnecessary wastage if electric power. It would thus have the individuals' time and
money while at the same time reducing the workload of the company by simplifying(virtually
eliminating) the tedious task of either posting or mailing and also by providing a simple, error-
free mechanism for documentation.

The controlled and monitored usage of electricity, would contribute a lot to energy saving and
would eventually save our environment and Earth in the long term process.

Since open source software is being used as a platform, the users can change the settings and the
graphical interface as per their choice, the only limit being their imagination.

Conclusion

This is an unexplored area for engineers with a social commitment and channelization of
thoughts and ideas towards this direction would definitely provide a great leap the development
life cycle of the environment, engineers and technicians.