Proceedings of 2018 IEEE Applied Signal Processing Conference (ASPCON)
Design and Implementation of IoT Based Smart
Energy Meter
Saikat Saha
Department of Electrical Engineering
St. Thomas’ College of Engg. &
Tech. Kolkata, India
Anindya Saha
Department of Electrical Engineering
St. Thomas’ College of Engg. &
Tech. Kolkata, India
Abstract—Modern day smart grid technology relies heavily
on communication networks for two-way communication
between load, generation, transmission, and control centre. As
a part of the smart grid, smart meters use advanced metering
infrastructures (AMI) that are widely distributed and inter-
connected to the communication network. Such integrated
infrastructure has made the power network easy to diagnose
and control. But unfortunately, this has made power system
networks vulnerable to various forms cyber-attacks that have
caused major concerns to power researchers in recent times.
As a first step towards such cyber-attack related researches
and searching for possible mitigation techniques, it is necessary
that a smart meter be developed that has the feature of
network integration. The present contribution reports the
design, fabrication, and operation of an Internet of Things
(IoT) based smart meter using Arduino to serve as an integral
part of a smart grid system
Keywords— Smart grid, Cyber security, Smart meter, IoT,
Arduino, Wi-Fi
I. INTRODUCTION
In traditional power grids, the load and control centers
are isolated from each other both physically as well as in
terms of visibility. In recent days, Smart Grid uses the real-
time measuring data from Advanced Metering Infrastructure
(AMI) for Distribution System Operator (DSO). Ensuring
such smart grid to be ‘secure’ involves less possibility of
power grid collapse or equipment malfunction. Therefore, to
protect this critical power system infrastructure and to ensure
a reliable and an uninterrupted power supply to the end users,
smart grid security issues is gaining substantial importance in
recent times [1]. Weaknesses in cyber security can also
threaten the physical security of the power systems due to the
deep integration of the physical and cyber systems [2]–[6].
An integral part of the smart grid technology is the smart
energy meter. The so called smart meters are expected to
read and record energy consumption data and communicate
it with the control center. In addition to recording energy
readings, these meters are also capable of recording other
related information such a power factor, active, reactive, and
apparent power, harmonics, power outages etc.
There are various researches that are going on and
various techniques that are available for measuring the
energy use of domestic loads and to report this data over the
network. In [7], the smart energy meter has been used along
with GSM and IoT making the system bulky and expensive
‹,(((
ISBN: 978-1-5386-6686-9
Swagata Mondal
Department of Electrical Engineering
St. Thomas’ College of Engg. &
Tech. Kolkata, India
P. Purkait
Department of Electrical Engineering
St. Thomas’ College of Engg. &
Tech. Kolkata, India
one. Especially when the cost of sending messages is far
more than that of sending data via internet. The blynk app
they have used for connecting iOs and Android to Arduino is
only able to provide information about kWh consumption.
To get the voltage and current ratings they had to use another
devices that increased complexity. Authors in [8]
demonstrated an IOT based energy meter using ARM Cortex
M4 with Android application. The design lacked flexibility
in terms of billing system in addition to being physically
bulky, and, costly too. In [9], authors have used the energy
meter blinking LED to get the required readings which lead
to lack of information since only kWh readings could be
obtained. That narrowed its field application. Use of PIC
microcontroller along with GSM module made the whole
smart meter design costly in [10]. Not only that, the PIC
microcontroller has lower features as compared to Arduino
in every aspect. Authors in [11] suggested the use of relay as
one of the operating components for remote disconnection of
supply. However, the use of Raspberry Pi made the system
costlier.
The present contribution reports the design, fabrication
and implementation of a smart energy meter, which utilizes
the features of embedded systems. Arduino microcontroller
with Wi-Fi modem have been used to introduce ‘Smart’
feature in a traditional domestic energy meter. The IoT based
smart energy meter developed in this work enables the
electricity supply authority to read the meter regularly
without physically visiting each house. This has been
achieved by the use of Arduino unit that continuously
monitor and records the energy meter reading in its memory.
With the use of Wi-Fi modem, the meter is made to
communicate with the internet making the system a part of
IoT. Using this smart energy meter, the consumer as well as
service provider will be able to view and read get the used
energy pattern along with the respective amount. The meter
is able to record and send voltage, current, energy, power,
and power factor. All these parameters are visible in both
webpage and Android mobile app. Through such detailed
record of events, the service provider can keep track of the
energy consumption pattern enabling better and efficient load
forecasting and management. On the other hand, the billing
system will become more transparent to the consumer.
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II. DEVICE DESCRIPTION

The main components that was used for this work are
Arduino UNO, Wi-Fi module ESP8266-01, current
transformer (CT), potential transformer (PT), voltage
regulator AMS1117, and one 16x2 LCD display.
The software that was used to run the simulation first is
PROTEUS and later on the programming part was done in
Arduino IDE.
Functional block diagram of the developed smart energy
meter is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 2. Assembled view of the smart energy meter

Fig. 1. Functonal block diagram of the developed IoT based smart

energy meter

A. Hardware description
The Arduino analog input pins were used to collect the
line current and line voltage data after being stepped down
by CT and PT respectively. The CT that we used was of
rating 5A/5mA. The PT we used was of rating 230V/10V.
Output current of the CT was made to flow through a fixed
value burden of 33 :. Output of the PT was given to a
10k:1k resistive potential divider circuit. After scaling down
the input voltage and current, DC offset of suitable value is
added to those signals so that they can be brought within th
measurable range of 0-5 V in the Arduino. Calculated values
of power, energy, active and reactive powers, and power Fig. 3. Flwo chart for computation of electrical parameters from measured
factor were locally displayed on the 16x2 LCD and also were raw signals
updated at regular intervals. The WiFi module ESP8266-01
was connected to the router for internet access. Once the The energy meter was tested with varying load having
internet access is secured, the module could successfully known values of combinations of R, L, and C.
send all relevant data to the IoT platform. Assembled view of
the hardware components of the developed smart energy B. Software description
meter is shown in Fig. 2.
1) PROTEUS
The samples once collected need to undergo a sequence PROTEUS is a software we used for the simulation
of mathematical processing involving a set of operations purposes beforehand the actual circuitry was done. It actually
with discrete-time signals, for computation of power, energy, helps to run the real system in a virtual context to find the
power factor, in addition to other parameters as described by maximum possible errors, not all though. but it is still
the flowchart in Fig. 3. extremely helpful to develop the total system virtually. There
are PROTEUS VSM studios that allows the microcontroller
to run the simulation. There are also Proteus Visual Designer

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 Proceedings of 2018 IEEE Applied Signal Processing Conference (ASPCON)
which allows the user to write the program in with simple
flowcharting methods. In addition to that, the PCB designing
was also done with the help of PROTEUS. Layout of the
circuitry in design in PROTEUS window is shown in Fig. 4.
Fig. 4. PROTEUS simulation window screenshot
2) Arduino IDE
Arduino Integrated Development Environment or
simply Arduino Software (IDE) was used to write the
program and to upload it to the Arduino module. The
program written inside it is called the sketches, that are saved
as a .ino file extension. Later on these programs can be
uploaded into the Arduino or Genuino devices. This IDE
consists of a text console too where one can easily monitor
the output results. If not the desired result is obtained, one
can edit and then upload it also.
Integration of software with hardware is backbone of
such a “smart” device. The flow chart shown in Fig. 5
depicts the thorough process through which the device
connects to the internet, collects the data, evaluates the
parameters and displays the results. How and when
connection is to be made with the IoT channel is also shown.
Fig. 5. Flowchart depicting working process of the smart meter
ISBN: 978-1-5386-6686-9
III. RESULTS
Once the device is ready, the user has to follow certain
steps as detailed in the flowchart of Fig. 6 for displaying the
records in a browser over internet. The IoT platform
ThingSpeak is used to collect and store data in the cloud and
develop further IoT applications.
Fig. 6. Steps for activating and running the smart meter
A. Display in Web Browser
Though all readings including, voltage, current, power,
energy, and power factor can be displayed in tabular form in
the browser, for having a better view of the pattern of
consumption and related signals, graphical representation is
preferred in this work. Such regular monitoring enables the
consumer to track consumption pattern and accordingly
manoeuvre the load as per desired monthly consumption. In
the other way around, the supply authorities also can easily
distinguish the pick load from those hourly graphs and can
schedule their loads efficiently. It is also possible for one to
track the power factor. So the identification of lagging of
power factor in any region becomes handy and quick. Some
example displays are shown in Fig. 7 – 13.
It can be seen in the figures that the supply was kept ON
till 12.30 but without any load, and till then all the displays
were showing corresponding readings. At 12.30, the supply
was switched OFF, causing a sharp drop of all displays to
zero. At 12.45, the supply was restored and all displays once
again came active.
Fig. 7. Votage display
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 Proceedings of 2018 IEEE Applied Signal Processing Conference (ASPCON)

Fig. 8. Current display Fig. 12. Display of energy consumption

To demonstrate accuracy of the developed smart meter,

calibration chart of measured power factor values against the
calculated values at various load combinations is shown in
Table I.

TABLE I. CALIBRATION CHART

R (:) XL (:) XC (:) pf pf

(calc) (meas)
264.5 0 0 1 1
529 0 0 1 1
132.25 70+j252.32 j318.31 0.89 0.94
132.25 46.67+j167.5 j318.31 0.67 0.71
Fig. 9. Power factor display 132.25 35+j125.66 j318.31 0.63 0.65
105.8 35+j125.66 j318.31 0.56 0.59
105.8 35+j125.66 j159.15 0.92 0.97
75.57 35+j125.66 j318.31 0.44 0.49
132.25 46.67+j167.5 j318.31 0.68 0.66
132.25 35+j125.66 j318.31 0.63 0.65

The calibration is done against a R-L-C load box where

the R, L and C were randomly chosen to imitate a typical real
life. The load power factors were calculated and then
compared against the measured values using the smart meter.
The error margin is quite less as seen from the calibration
chart of Fig 13.

Fig. 10. Display of active power

Fig. 13. Calibration chart of power factor (measured vs. calculated),

along with error markers
Fig. 11. Display of apparent power

B. Display in Android mobile app

In addition to displaying results in web browser, the IoT
based smart meter designed in the work has the capability of
displaying results and graphs on Android mobile app also.

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 Proceedings of 2018 IEEE Applied Signal Processing Conference (ASPCON)
This feature makes the system substantially flexible in the
sense that both consumers and supply operators get to keep
note of energy consumption while on the go. Some example
plots of the mobile app interface are shown in Fig. 14.
Fig. 14. Voltage and current display in Android mobile app
IV. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE SCOPE
An IoT based smart energy meter has been developed
and its performance has been explained in this article. It is
shown to have the following features:
x The data is collected by a data management system
which can provide the energy usage information to
the user in through the internet.
x The device works online so all the data are received
in real time.
x With the help of developed app, one can view day-
wise load analysis curve along with current connected
load data to energy meter. Hence power optimization
can be achieved.
x Ease of access in determining the pick loads along
with the time of the pick load thus load scheduling
becomes easier.
x The android app directly connects the user to the
energy management. Thus each and every consumer
becomes the contributor to the efficient energy
management.
ISBN: 978-1-5386-6686-9
x The data since stored in the cloud service it's always
more secured.
x Transparency increases since human involvement in
meter readings gets eliminated, also bill can be
processed without any delay.
x The components being robust and modern updated
ones, accuracy is guaranteed.
The developed smart meter can be very effectively used
as one of the major components of a smart grid. In addition
to being used for cyber security related studies, the
developed device can have some immediate future
advancement possible:
x System can be enhanced for power theft detection
using IOT.
x The Android application can append options for
online payment of bill.
x In the proposed method load analysis of single entity
is performed; in future it can be boosted for area wise
load analysis which will help for load forecasting.
x Prepayment can be added with model so as to develop
pre-paid energy meters.
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