Sustainability 2886097 Highlighted

sustainability
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2
Article 3
A Low-Cost Energy Monitoring System with Universal 4
Compatibility and Real-time Visualization for Enhanced 5
Accessibility and Power Savings 6
Hashim Raza Khan 1,2 , Majida Kazmi 1,2 , Lubaba 1 , Hashir Bin Khalid 1 , Urooj Alam 1 , Kamran Arshad 3,4 *, Khaled 7
Assaleh3,4 , and Saad Ahmed Qazi 1,2 8
1 Neurocomputation Lab, National Center of Artificial Intelligence, Karachi 75270, Pakistan 9

2 Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi 10
75270, Pakistan 11
3 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering and Information Technology, 12
Ajman University, Ajman, UAE 13

4 Artificial Intelligence Research Centre, Ajman University, Ajman, UAE 14
* Correspondence: k.arshad@ajman.ac.ae 15
Abstract: Energy management is important for both consumers and utility providers. The utility 16
providers are inclined towards identifying and reducing energy wastages and thefts. Consumers are 17
interested in reducing their energy consumption and bills. In Pakistan, the residential and industrial 18
estates account for nearly 31,000 MW of the maximum total demand, while the transmission and 19
distribution capacity is stalled at about 22,000 MW. This 9000 MW gap in demand and supply, 20
reported in 2022, has led to frequent load shedding. Although the country now has excess generation 21
capacity of about 45,000 MW, the aging transmission and distribution network cannot deliver the 22
requisite power at all ties. Hence, electricity-related woes are likely to continue for the next several 23
years in the country and the same is true for other low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Several 24
Energy Monitoring Systems (EnMS) have been proposed previously but they face limitations in terms 25
of cost, ease of application, lack of universal installation capability, customization, and data security. 26
The underlying research focuses on the development of an economical, secure, and customizable 27
real-time EnMS. The proposed EnMSis comprised of low-cost hardware for gathering energy data 28
with universal compatibility, a secured communication module for real-time data transmission, and a 29
Citation: Khan, H.R.; Kazmi, M.; dashboard application for visualization of real-time energy consumption in a user-preferred manner 30
Lubaba; Bin Khalid, H; Alam, U; making the information easily accessible and actionable. Experimental results and analysis reveal 31
Arshad K.; Assaleh1 K.;Qazi, S.A.;
that approximately 40% of cost savings in EnMS development can be achieved as compared to other 32
Title. Sustainability 2024, 1, 0.
commercially available EnMS. The performance of EnMS’s hardware is evaluated and validated 33
https://doi.org/
through rigorous experiments on-site. The front-end of EnMS is assessed through surveys and found 34
Academic Editor: Firstname Lastname very interactive and user-friendly for the target clients. The developed EnMS architecture is found to 35
be an economical end-product and an appropriate reach out to small and medium clients such as 36
Received:
residential, institutional, commercial and industrial consumers; all in one platform. 37
Revised:
Accepted: Keywords: Cost-efficient; Customizable; Energy monitoring; Internet of things(IoT); Real-time; 38
Published: End-to-end secure architecture; Visualization 39
Copyright: © 2024 by the authors. 1. Introduction 40

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Global energy crises calls for efficient management of electricity production and con- 41
This article is an open access article
sumption especially in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) [1,2]. One of the possible 42
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
solutions to overcome energy crises is to increase energy production by using renewable 43
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://

energy resources [3,4]. However, the development and deployment of renewable energy 44
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
resources is an expensive and complex task. Further, in case of a surge in power demand, 45
4.0/). renewable sources cannot increase the generation unless a storage medium such as battery 46
Sustainability 2024, 1, 0. https://doi.org/10.3390/su1010000 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability

Sustainability 2024, 1, 0 2 of 27
banks are present which significantly increases the overall cost of the renewable energy 47
solution. On the other hand managing and balancing the load on the demand side to use 48
resources efficiently is an economical solution. This addresses energy crises by reducing 49
energy wastage such as standby consumption (leaving the device on standby), the use 50
of outdated lighting fixtures, poor insulation in buildings and leaving electronics devices 51
plugged in. An efficient electrical system equipped with an Energy Monitoring System 52
(EnMS) [1,5] is both reliable and resilient. This contributes to solutions for reducing energy 53
waste by monitoring and analyzing energy consumption in real-time. Consumers signifi- 54
cantly benefit from this technology by gaining insights into their energy usage patterns. 55
This empowers them to make informed decisions and modify their behavior to reduce 56
energy waste. Examples of such changes include turning off devices instead of leaving them 57
on standby, replacing outdated lighting fixtures with energy-efficient ones, and improving 58
building insulation. These actions can lead to improved financial viability [6,7]; unlike the 59
conventional methods, [8]. EnMS can acquire electrical signals data from energy meters 60
and then intelligently record and monitor the consumption of electricity and display in 61
real-time through a user interface (UI) [6]. 62
Advanced digital communication technologies are deployed to monitor and manage elec- 63
trical changes within the grid. Such communication mechanisms for the bidirectional flow 64
of information within several nodes of EnMS are required to be reliable, secure and efficient 65
[9,10]. The approach to connect devices or nodes and monitor them via the Internet is 66
termed as the Internet of Things (IoT) [11,12]. Connecting these nodes using the Cloud 67
Computing platform benefits the decision-makers in applying the real-time analysis in a 68
more flexible and scalable way. 69
The architecture of real-time EnMS can be divided into three tiers. Monitor tier (residing at 70
consumer premises), cloud tier or server tier, and client tier (UI). Different software and 71
functionalities are used at each tier to attain real-time monitoring and data management 72
[13]. The monitor tier may consist of an energy meter at a higher level for buildings and 73
grids, or a smart plug at a lower level; for individual devices. For higher-level energy mon- 74
itoring, a single node connects the building/grid, thus it is less complex and non-intrusive. 75
It is preferred where individual load consumption and control of the device is not required. 76
For the second tier, i.e., cloud tier, the cloud-based service models can be classified into three 77
types: PaaS (Platform as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), and SaaS (Software 78
as a Service) [4]. PaaS and SaaS are easier to use but they both are relatively costly, as 79
the service provider manages most of the cloud computing features and provides limited 80
freedom when it comes to the infrastructure of the cloud. IaaS, on the other hand, is more 81
economical and provides more freedom of developing the infrastructure of the cloud as 82
per the requirements, but it requires development expertise. Wireless technologies such as 83
3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi are preferred for communication in these decentralized systems [4,14,15]. 84
The third tier, i.e., the client tier provides a visual breakdown to the end-user/client in 85
a customized way. This visual breakdown and monetary projections in real-time allow 86
bringing change in the behaviour of consumers to use energy efficiently and improve 87
financial viability [6] by demand-side management. 88
For higher-level energy monitoring, energy meters acquire and display energy data i.e., 89
voltage, current, power etc. of building. A market survey reveals that usually buildings 90
are already equipped with smart energy meters. In contrast to the market needs, available 91
EnMS [16,17] offer smart meter as a component, which eventually increases the cost of the 92
system. The relatively higher cost of available EnMS, results in their disposal at sizeable 93
power plants, making it impractical for smaller clients [4], such as residential or commercial 94
building clients, and their complexity doesn’t allow easy customization provision. This 95
arises the requirement of developing an economical EnMS capable of collecting electrical 96
energy data in real-time and communicating with other devices (mobile phones, laptops, 97
tablets, etc.) providing customized visual breakdown to the client. 98
Secondly, besides cost, the customers are always concerned about the security of their data 99
being sent on the cloud over the internet. Therefore, the security of IoT based EnMS is also 100
extremely important. The communication medium of the connected nodes needs to be 101
secured so that no one can hack, spy or change the data during transmission [9,10]. This 102
research focuses on the indigenous development of a low-cost cloud-based intelligent real- 103
time energy monitoring solution. The research presents the architecture framework, design 104
methodology, validation, and development of the proposed system which is ready to be 105
installed at the customer’s site for remote monitoring of their electricity load profiles. The 106
performance of the system is evaluated by the demonstration and validation of the demo 107
setup. The verification of the system is done by installing the node circuit at different loca- 108
tions in an engineering university. The system has two main parts; hardware and software. 109
Hardware considerations are made to keep the cost low for economical end-product and 110
thus feasible reach out to small and medium clients. The software considerations are made 111
to attain high flexibility, seamless and secure communication as well as easy scalability of 112
the system. The system’s hardware is implemented on a printed circuit board (PCB) for ease 113
of installation. The PCB consists of a data acquisition (DAQ) module that communicates 114
with energy meters through Modbus protocol, a Wi-Fi module for communication with 115
the cloud, and a power module to power up the card through alternating current (AC) 116
mains. In addition, it is possible to replace Wi-Fi connectivity with an Ethernet interface or 117
mobile network modem. The data is transmitted to the database located on the server at 118
user specified granularity. Our proposed system uses IaaS, as a cloud computing model in 119
our system. A live dashboard is hosted in the cloud that provides interactive visualizations 120
as well as monetary projections (using local electricity provider tariffs) to the clients. The 121
dashboard is available to the clients via the Internet on any peripheral capable of running a 122
browser. The dashboard contains modules categorized as Engineering, Business and User 123
Management which are further divided into sub-categories for interactive and engaging 124
user experience. The visual breakdown supports bringing change in the behaviour of 125
consumers to use energy efficiently thus, reducing the demand-side load. This research 126
proposed a low-cost and secure IoT-based real-time energy monitoring solution, with main 127
contributions as follows: 128
• Low cost – the system is indigenously developed by using open-source software and 129
packages, appropriate hardware is selected as per our requirements with minimal 130
cost. 131
• User-friendly Multi-functional UI – all the options in the UI are customized and 132
designed carefully aiming at user preferences and ease for making the information 133
easily accessible and actionable. The UI is designed keeping human computer interface 134
(HCI) in mind. The theme and placement of interactive features are designed and 135
assessed as per the ease of interaction of the end-user as well as the administrator. 136
The development of the modules is done through a modular approach and features in 137
each module are designed for behaviour change towards energy consumption. 138
• Compatible Hardware – the EnMS’s universal installation capability makes it vendor- 139
independent for energy meters. All energy meters that use Modbus are supported. 140
The firmware is coded dynamically so that the changing order of the pins of different 141
parameters does not affect the logic of the insert operation on the cloud database. 142
• Secure – the overall solution is secured by establishing a firewall and secure socket 143
layer (SSL) for encrypted communication between different tiers of the IoT framework. 144
Both device-to-cloud and cloud-to-user communications are end-to-end encrypted to 145
provide complete security to the system. 146
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the literature review of 147
the related work. Section 3 elaborated design methodology containing architecture frame- 148
work and technological breakdown of the system with a detailed description of hardware 149
and software components and security protocols of the system. Section 4 presents perfor- 150
mance validation and system verification, section 5 presents the results and discussion, 151
section 6 concludes the work and presents future direction. 152

2. Related Work 153
A lot of recent research work focuses on developing EnMS solutions. Numerous 154
previous studies aim to bring long-term behavioural changes in end-user towards energy 155
consumption patterns by offering EnMS based on machine learning (ML), IoT, and cloud 156
computing [18,19]. On basis of functionality, the demand-side energy solution can be 157
categorized mainly into management and monitoring systems. The monitoring systems 158
provide real-time monitoring [4,19,20]. It is non-intrusive and thus easy to integrate with 159
existing systems, at both higher-level (buildings and grids) and low-level (devices). On 160
the other hand, the management systems not only monitor but also control the connected 161
devices, often with some feedback or load detection mechanisms [6,21,22]. Due to the 162
feature of remote control, these systems are usually applicable for low-level i.e., devices 163
within a building targeting home automation for reducing residential consumption. 164
These energy management systems utilize different sensors along with a microcontroller to 165
monitor and control energy-related parameters. They claimed to be successful for home 166
automation [9,22–24]. In [6,25,26] remote energy management system was proposed for 167
the end-users to monitor and control multiple devices around the home in real-time from a 168
web interface thus conveniently controlling electrical appliances remotely. IntelliHome, a 169
cloud-based IoT solution for saving home energy by giving recommendations on consump- 170
tion was proposed in [23]. These recommendations are expected to change the behaviour 171
of end-users towards efficient consumption. The Smart Energy Managenemnt System 172
(SEMS) [27] makes a distinctive contribution by implementing a multi-tiered architecture 173
based on cloud computing and IoT. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol 174
(TCP/IP) protocol for bidirectional communication, an Energy Control (ECN) layer, and a 175
flexible hardware configuration with an ESP32 microcontroller, relays, and analytics are all 176
features of SEMS. The system [28] benefits from the versatile ATmega328, renowned for its 177
Advanced Virtual RISC (AVR) capabilities. This system combines a liquid crystal display 178
(LCD) display, sensors, and a solar panel to provide effective energy management and 179
monitoring. An ESP8266 is used to connect the ATmega328 to IoT, allowing data processing 180
on an IoT server or cloud. 181
An intelligent remote electrical power and supervisory control, supervisory control and 182
data acquisition (SCADA) system was developed using ASP.Net model-view-controller 183
(MVC) for remote monitoring of electrical devices [13]. A system on chip (SoC) was de- 184
signed for real-time monitoring and feedback of Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring 185
(NAILM) [29]. Apart from work done on the IoT framework, some other frameworks are 186
also used in the field of home automation towards energy consumption. The authors of 187
[30] used fog computing for the development of an energy management system capable of 188
controlling residential consumption at the device-level. 189
Energy management systems are also developed at a higher level for specific buildings. 190
They are implemented to provide key insights to the building administration for consump- 191
tion control. LoRa based Building Energy management system (LoBEMS) was developed 192
for the local administration of a Kindergarten school to identify savings with the help of 193
data visualization and implement saving actions locally with personalized heuristics. The 194
authors observed a 20% saving of energy with control of AC and lighting [31]. An advanced 195
IoT based intelligent energy management system in buildings was built to provide daily 196
and weekly action plans to the administration of the building [32]. An efficient energy 197
monitoring and management IoT based system was proposed for the machining workshop 198
as an industrial application [33]. The system was designed to provide energy consumption 199
breakdown as per the actions of the machining workshop. 200
Now in the next category, EnMS for building-level energy consumption are inclined to- 201
wards providing information of energy consumption patterns primarily for decision mak- 202
ing. CitiSim-IoT and cloud-based energy monitoring and simulation platform proved 203
to be a viable solution with providing economic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to 204
decision-makers [34]. Another application of EnMS is on clusters of the building or on a 205
grid level for monitoring real-time consumption at an accumulated level. These EnMS are 206
needed by the commercial and industrial consumers for policymaking on efficient con- 207
sumption. A large scale IoT based solution for monitoring a fleet of educational buildings 208
of educational levels (primary, secondary, high school, and university) was developed 209
using a mixture of open-source IoT hardware and platforms, having its responsiveness and 210
scalability evaluated for its overall performance. The system is capable of providing an 211
open IT infrastructure to different commercial vendors [18]. 212
Besides conventional energy, many renewable resources for energy generation are now 213
available to address the energy crises from the supply side. However, efficient energy con- 214
sumption is equally important from the demand side of these renewable energy resources 215
as well. For this purpose, a renewable energy monitoring system of a decentralized photo- 216
voltaic (PV) plant was developed using IoT and a web-based monitoring system for the 217
real-time visualization of the consumption-related parameters [4]. In [3], a smart low-cost 218
IoT solution for monitoring the electrical and environmental parameters of the photovoltaic 219
system was proposed and validated by an economical study of the proposed system. Other 220
than voltage, current and power an alternative way of getting consumption information is 221
in terms of cost/ bills. In [35] authors proposed an ML algorithm for forecasting electricity 222
bills. Similarly, an application for forecasting electricity bills till the next due date for home 223
meters was proposed in [36]. Smart Meters (SM) are used for providing Time-of-use or 224
real-time pricing solutions in the context of energy awareness and home automation [5]. 225
Apart from the backend architecture, the frontend of the EnMS is crucial as well. Both the 226
energy monitoring and management systems usually come with some UI for providing 227
ease of interaction to the user. The UI helps the user in understanding the consumption 228
usage in a more friendly way with a level of abstraction to the implementation. Different 229
studies have used different platforms for UI design and development. ThingSpeak server 230
was used by the authors of [9] to store and plot data graphs. A locally hosted web interface 231
was developed in [34] for visualizing energy consumption breakdown based on selected 232
time by the user. The web interface is also capable of managing nodes remotely. The 233
authors of [24], displays daily current monitoring on a single webpage. In [3,20] authors 234
used the open-source dashboarding tool Grafana for real-time visualization of recorded 235
parameters. In [3] five parameters namely Power, current, voltage, temperature and irradi- 236
ance level were visualized using the Grafana dashboard. The dashboard is also capable 237
of generating alerts. The authors in [22] developed a chat-bot application that responds 238
to a particular keyword for informing them about the energy units consumed. In [37], a 239
web-based user interface was developed for monitoring real-time power usage, ratio and 240
overview on the web views. A mobile app was developed in [23], which provides insights 241
into annual and monthly consumption and energy-saving recommendations reports and 242
charts. A mobile notification via LINE application for forecasting electricity bills till the 243
next due date for home meters was developed in [36]. The authors in [31] of LoBEMS used 244
Node-RED Dashboard for visualizations of the weather and consumption parameters along 245
with AC and lightning plugs controllers. Their dashboard is focused on administrative staff 246
and decision making rather than customers. As all of the above discussed UIs have their 247
speciality but none of them combines the monitoring, monetary and user management 248
features. Also, a single dashboard with user access control could serve both administrators 249
and users. 250
Other than efficient architecture and functional frontend UI, security is another important 251
factor. Most of the proposed IoT based EnMS [19,22–24] either focus on cutting the cost of 252
the system or introducing new features to UI but often overlook the security aspects of IoT 253
infrastructure. The security of different layers of IoT is extremely important. The different 254
aspects of security include confidentiality, data integrity and concurrency, network authen- 255
ticity, secure channel etc. The node-server network communication of the connected nodes 256
needs to be secured so that no one can hack, spy or change the data during transmission. 257
The client-server channel needs security in terms of integrity, concurrency and availability 258
of the data. The vulnerabilities on the data layer lead to serious mal-functionalities and 259
compromising of the data, which may lead to data loss, inconsistency and unavailability 260
of the system. Few of the researchers have presented a secured EnMS for household or 261
renewable energy resources [4,20]. 262
The above literature review reveals that there is a need for the development of an eco- 263
nomical as well as efficient EnMS based on the decentralized approach, with a single UI 264
facilitating both administrators and end-users by implementing reliability and security 265
with the help of innovating technologies. This research focuses on the design, development 266
and validation of a cost-effective and secure real-time energy monitoring solution capable 267
of accommodating residential, commercial and industrial consumers; such as buildings, 268
institutes, homes, and even grids, all in one platform. 269
3. Design Methodology 270
This section demonstrates the overall architecture of the proposed EnMS. It consists 271
of a low-cost hardware circuit, a secure communication medium, and a customizable 272
real-time dashboard. The hardware circuit fetches the readings from energy meters. It is 273
highly compatible i.e., not restricted to any specific vendor. The communication module 274
is designed for the secure transmission of data at user-specified intervals via Wi-Fi to the 275
cloud server. The server hosts a website that allows users to visualize and monitor real-time 276
consumption of usage. The architecture of the EnMS is discussed below. 277
3.1. Overall System Architecture 278
The proposed EnMS architecture consists of a single cloud-based server, with multiple 279
clients and nodes as shown in Figure 1. A node is a specially designed low-cost embedded 280
hardware responsible for acquiring the electrical energy consumption data from the energy 281
meter and transmitting it to the server with the help of a Wi-Fi module. The server over the 282
cloud runs consistently, receiving the information from the nodes. The server also hosts a 283
web interface allowing the clients to remotely monitor their respective authenticated meter’s 284
electrical energy parameters as well as accumulated bills for a default defined period. The 285
end-user can change the defined period for billing as per the requirements on run-time. 286
The dashboard is flexible and to the clients’ requirements. The triggers for the alarms 287
and warnings are customizable as per the clients’ needs. Clients can query the database 288
and set rules for consumption alerts, i.e. defining minimum and maximum thresholds for 289
different energy consumption related parameters. Clients could be any peripheral capable 290
of connecting to a wired or wireless network exhibiting HyperText Transfer Protocol/ 291
HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTP/HTTPS) web pages. The reason for using 292
web pages is to end the dispute of the compatibility with different operating systems of 293
application (app) like Google Android, Apple iOS, and Microsoft Windows. As each of 294
the operating systems would require its custom-built version of the system (in different 295
programming languages), but all support web browsers by default. 296
Energy Meters
Data Push
Node1 Custom
PHP API
Processing
HTTP(S)
Node2
Data Pull
TCP/IP
DNS
Node3
Database
Monitor Tier Server Tier Client Tier
Figure 1. Proposed energy monitoring system architecture

3.2. Technological Breakdown of the Architecture 297
The above-discussed architecture of the overall system is implemented using various 298
open-source tools and technologies and off-the-shelf components to get the desired features. 299
The technological breakdown of the overall architecture is depicted in Figure 2. The 300
breakdown is based on the customer and server’s premises for a smooth flow of data and 301
ease of management. The energy monitoring node has hardware and communication, the 302
cloud server consists of services, security, database, and infrastructure and client has access 303
to the interactive UI. The UI consists of several features for providing detailed information 304
about consumption-related parameters. The technological breakdown is elaborated in the 305
subsections 3.2.1, 3.2.2, 3.2.3. 306
Energy Monitoring Node Cloud Server The User Interface (UI)
Hardware Services Features/ Modules

Web/App Real-time monitoring
Energy Meter Analysis History (Trends)
Collection/ Creation API Prediction
RS-485 Modbus Scheduled Reports Billing
DAQ card generation Customized alerts
Event based triggers for Configurable Warnings
warnings and alerts and alarms
Arduino Board
Library
Wi-Fi Chip Security
ESP8266 SSL/ HTTPS highcharts, Google
charts,pChart, Tcpdf,
Database jQuery, php-mailer, php-ai
RDBMS
Communication Web
Internet Infrastructure HTML, CSS, JS, JSON,

IaaS AJAX, PHP, Bootstrap
Figure 2. Technological breakdown of energy monitoring system
3.2.1. Energy Monitoring Node 307
Considerations are made for the proposed embedded circuit to keep it low-cost, highly 308
compatible, and readily available with the necessary functionality. The circuit can be catego- 309
rized into 2 major modules namely the main controller board and communication module. 310
The RS-485 Modbus protocol is responsible for communicating with the energy meter 311
which is mostly available with the clients and uses a DAQ card for raw data acquisition. 312
Once it gets all the parameter values, the Main controller i.e., Arduino fetches these values 313
and makes a GET HTTPS request uniform resource locator (URL) along with node mac, 314
assigned device id, and password to distinguish between multiple devices on the same 315
or different locations. This is then sent to the server using the ESP8266 Wi-Fi microchip 316
communication module. The card design is generic so that the same base design can be 317
used to support 2G/3G/4G modem or ethernet connectivity module as well. The requisite 318
power module for these communication mediums can be easily replaced in place of the 319
existing power module required for Wi-Fi communication. The main controller Arduino 320
board runs on firmware. Although there are other possible communication protocols of IoT 321
such as Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Zigbee etc., due to a limited 322
number of nodes GET request at a higher level with HTTPS is sufficient. The circuit is 323
protected from surges on AC size by optocouplers on input ports. The proposed embedded 324
circuit is highly compatible with vendor-neutral energy meters as long as they use Modbus. 325
It currently supports meters from Schneider[38], Elmeasure[39], Crompton[40], Ziegler[41] 326
and Selec[42]. Table 1 displays circuit components with their respective functionalities and 327
communication technologies. 328

Table 1. Circuit components with description.
Circuit Components Function Communication Technology

Interface between Arduino and analog
DAQ card Modbus
signals
ESP8266 Wi-Fi Chip Gives access of Wi-Fi to Arduino board TCP/IP
Save the raw data into pre-defined
Arduino Board USB
variables, Make a GET request
Gives LAN network access to Arduino
Ethernet Shield TCP/IP
Board
3.2.2. Cloud Architecture 329
The cloud server is further categorized as storage, control, and communication. A 330
standard virtual private server (VPS) is configured for providing services, security and 331
infrastructure to serve the purpose. The hardware configuration of the server is tabulated 332
in Table 2. The hardware configurations of the server are easily scalable by upgrading the 333
package, but as of now, these configurations satisfy our requirements. Ubuntu Linux 18.04 334
long term support (LTS) is used as the operating system of the server. The storage space 335
of the cloud needs management to store data within a single data centre. MySQL server 336
is used as relational database management system (RDBMS) for Create, Read, Update, 337
Delete (CRUD) operations, i.e., for managing and storing on our cloud. The received data 338
is stored in a specified table format and its consistency and integrity are maintained by 339
relational keys, thus avoiding data redundancy as well as saving the memory space and 340
cost of the server. Triggers are configured for every new reading to timely generate alarms 341
and warnings as per user-defined thresholds. A custom application programming interface 342
(API) is built for data management between the nodes and the server. These scripts use 343
PHP data object (PDO) which is a built-in class of hypertext pre-processor (PHP) for the 344
database connection to run queries written in structured query language (SQL). 345
Table 2. Server hardware configuration.
Features Specifications
Memory 1 GB RAM
Processor a vCPU
Data rate 1 TB transfer
Hard disk 25 GB SSD
Cost 5 USD PM
Complete dataflow of the EnMS is shown in Figure 3. The Modbus module read energy 346
parameters i.e., voltages, currents and powers from the energy meter. These parameters are 347
then passed to the main controller module which makes a GET request by assigning the 348
values of the parameters to their designated variables. This request is then sent to the server 349
where custom built-API receives the variables and then store the values into the database. 350
This is updated on the live monitoring module asynchronously. There are different triggers 351
for alarms and warnings listed on the database for different parameters, as soon as the 352
event of storing a new record occurs, the triggers are activated and if any of the parameters 353
crosses the specified threshold of alarm or warning, an alert is sent to the dashboard as 354
well as an email to the user if the user has subscribed for alarms and warnings. A warning 355
and alarms log is also maintained on the dashboard for user feasibility. The thresholds for 356
the parameters are user-customizable, as different types of users have different types of 357
consumption. When a new device is set up it has pre-defined thresholds. Users can update 358
the threshold as per requirements and this updating automatically updates the triggers 359
on the database. Apart from alerts users can also set preferences for the types of charts 360
to be displayed in the trends module. The trends module remembers these preferences 361
even after the session is closed by the user. The daily and monthly reporting of the energy 362
consumption and budgeting is set to auto-generate to be emailed to the user through cron 363
jobs. 364
Read Energy
Parameters Store Data Process data Display device's
real-time data
Modbus
Module
Lock triggers Events and Web Interface

Energy Meter GET request URL User
based alerts scheduled tasks
Main Controller
Accept
commands from
Record user user
Transmit Data preferences
Wireless
connection board MySQL Database
Node (many) Server (one)
Figure 3. Data flow of the energy monitoring system.
3.2.3. The User Interface (UI) 365
The transmitted data in raw form is hard to understand and interpret by the end-users. 366
Therefore, the data is presented in a human-understandable form using graphical user 367
interface (GUI) accessed by the end-user through email authentication sign-up logic. For 368
real-time visualization of the consumption, the following parameters were monitored: 369
Line Neutral Voltage, Total Line Current, Total Real Power, Total Reactive Power, Total 370
Apparent Power, Power Factor Average, all along with their respective phase Yellow, Red 371
and Blue. The dials are configured for easy understanding of the consumption at a glance. 372
The modular technique is used to develop the website. The modules are categorized as 373
Engineering, Business, and Management handlers. The Engineering module is further 374
divided into Live monitoring, Trends, Reports, and Warnings. Besides live monitoring, the 375
engineering module is configured to generate trends, reports, alarms and warnings for the 376
consumption health record and timely feedback to the user. The Business module consists of 377
the Intelligence and Billing part of the EnMS. This module is targeted towards the financial 378
viability of the end-user’s organization. The Management module has Organization and 379
Users respectively, which allows the administration to remotely manage their locations, 380
devices and allowed users. Figure 4 shows the list of goals, user options and outputs of 381
each of the respective goals provided by the developed EnMS. 382

GOAL USER OPTIONS / OUTPUTS USER INTERFACE
OPTIONS: Select device from the

available list of locations privileged to the
LIVE CONSUMPTION user.
OUTPUTS: Real-time data
visualizations
ENGINEERING MODULE
OPTIONS: Date and time selection
Charts preferences
TRENDS OF OUTPUTS: Consumption visualization
CONSUMPTION with respect to date and time
Consumption breakdown according to
local tariff's on peak and off peak hours
OPTIONS: Set Voltage, Current,

Power and Budget maximum and
minimum values for warnings and
CONSUMPTION HEALTH alerts
AND MONITORING OUTPUTS: Daily and monthly reports for
consumption pattern and billing estimation
direct in inbox of user email account,
Triggered based warnings and alerts
OPTIONS: Date and time selection

Add/ Edit/ Delete shifts as per date and
BUSINESS
MODULE
time
MONETARY VALUES OUTPUTS: Monetary projections and
predictions, Shifts consumption
visualizations. Approximate billing
according to the tariff
OPTIONS: Add/ Edit/ Delete locations,

MANAGEMENT
devices and users (that are privileged

MODULE
to the current signed-in user only)

ADMINISTRATIVE
OUTPUTS: Hierarchy management
MANAGEMENT
Modules level privilege
Location and device assignment to the
users
Figure 4. Summary of useful features of UI.
The above-discussed GUI is designed keeping HCI in mind. HCI focuses on the inter- 383
facing between humans and computers and incorporates ergonomics and psychology into 384
the field of computer science. The colour theme and placement of interactive features are 385
designed and placed as per the user’s ease of interaction with similar websites. Responsive 386
web design (RWD) is used for creating a user-friendly web interface with an adjustable 387
user screen size. Figure 5 shows the developed web-based dashboard for achieving the 388
listed goals. 389
Figure 5. Proposed EnMS Dashboard.

The user experience is enhanced by providing assorted features for behavior change, 390
expense monitoring, and consumption feedback. The developed features as listed in Table 391
3 are explained as follows: 392
• Behavior Change The proposed EnMS architecture allows assisting in changing user 393
behaviour by gathering usage patterns and displaying information in a consciously 394
modulating manner. Auto-generated daily and monthly reports are being sent to the 395
user by email at the end of each day/month. The daily report contains an energy 396
consumption graph of the day with on-peak and off-peak hours highlighted. The 397
consumption pattern is compared with the same day last week as well as with the 398
temperature of the current day. Similarly, the monthly bill received by the customer 399
at the end of the month by the local energy utility provider has a minimal effect on 400
the consumption behaviour of the customer in a reactive manner. As that bill only 401
shows a single bar for whole month consumption with no-peak hour breakdown. The 402
proposed EnMS generated the monthly report as shown in the Appendix B. 403
Along with these reports, the daily shift graphs also help in monitoring and controlling 404
the consumption by allowing the users to make policies for a time of the shifts as 405
depicted in Figure 6. The shift graphs help in visualizing the energy consumption 406
during the defined shifts of the user. This feature helps in keeping the track of the 407
consumption in the allotted time period. The user can manage and relocate the shifts 408
for efficient management and consumption in a proactive manner. 409
Figure 6. Energy consumption during shifts.
• Expense Monitoring The total energy units in terms of kilowatt hours (kWh), as well 410
as on-peak and off-peak, are shown in numeric form also and the same is converted 411
into charges according to tariff used by the customer. The daily consumption is broken 412
down into on-peak and off-peak units as well as charges calculating the amount up to 413
per day and hour granularity. The amount is further divided into per hour and the 414
pie chart visualizes the contribution of on-peak and off-peak units to your total bill of 415
the day. All this information helps in changing user behaviour towards more efficient 416
consumption, in contrast to just a lump sum amount at the end of the month with 417
no breakdown based on per day or hour charges or separate on-peak and off-peak 418
consumption analysis as shown in Appendix A. The accumulated billing calculation 419
before the end-of-month helps in visualizing the consumption in amount using the 420
tariff provided by the commercial utility provider. The user can select any time period 421
for generating the bill and can monitor upcoming estimated/ expected expenses 422
before the actual bill comes to hand. The billing module is depicted in Figure 7. 423
Figure 7. Billing of the selected period.
• Consumption Health The users are allowed to set up the min and max value of the 424
following parameters for Alarms and Warnings thresholds of their consumption. The 425
alarms and warnings when occurring in real-time consumption are locked with the 426
time-stamp as well as the value above/below the threshold that helps the customer in 427
monitoring the health of the consumption. 428
• Feedback on Consumption The generated reports contain feedback on the energy 429
consumption of the day and month as well. The pie chart visualizes the bill’s mone- 430
tary division as shown in Appendix A. It shows the breakdown in terms of money 431
contributing to the whole bill. The ultimate target of the user is to reduce the amount 432
of on-peak bills so that the total amount of the bill can be reduced. The on-peak ratio 433
is calculated and compared with a predefined chart based on scale division as shown 434
in Table 4. This interpretation of the ratio of consumption helps the user in reducing 435
its on-peak ratio so that overall consumption and billing can be reduced. The on-peak 436
ratio is calculated as shown in equation (1). 437
on peak units o f the day

OnPeakRatio = (1)
total units o f the day
Table 3. User Experience features.
User experience Feature

Behavior Change Daily, Monthly energy trend/ Shifts graph
Estd breakdown of on-peak/off-peak charges,
Expense Monitoring
billing before end of month
Alarms and warnings with timestamp and
Consumption Health
value
consumption ratio, on-peak/off-peak units
Feedback on consumption
contribution to the total bill
Table 4. On-Peak Consumption Feedback.
Ratio Interpretation
On Peak Ratio <0.3 Good
0.3 < On Peak Ratio < 0.4 Average
0.4 < On Peak Ratio < 0.3 Needs Improvement
On Peak Ratio >0.5 Poor
3.3. Security of the proposed EnMS 438
The security of any cloud-based IoT architecture is the main concern during all the 439
phases of communication, whether it is node-server communication or client-server com- 440
munication. The security challenges of the IoT framework requires the ability to ensure 441
security by integrity, confidentiality, authentication, end-to-end encryption etc. The confi- 442
dentiality, integrity, availability (CIA) triad ensures security on the overall system. 443
The confidentiality of the system is defined as the availability of the data to the authorized 444
users and nodes only. The nodes mustn’t reveal the information to any unauthorized IoT 445
device connected to the same network. The developed EnMS secures the confidentiality 446
of the system by ensuring that every time the server receives a request from any node it 447
authenticates the node by matching its media access control (MAC) address, location and 448
device id and password already registered in the database. MAC addresses are always 449
unique and this allows the node to be identified by the server even if its IP address changes 450
due to the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) network. If it doesn’t match 451
then, the process will exit. This authentication process is mandatory every time a node hits 452
the server. For ensuring the confidentiality of the EnMS to the client, the communication 453
between client-server communication is secured through an SSL certificate, which is ob- 454
tained on the domain name server (DNS) to ensure HTTPS protocol on the browser. The 455
HTTPS protocol encrypts the communication between the client and the server. Hence it is 456
impossible to read, modify messages in transit by third parties. The browsers indicate the 457
secure links by adding a small lock icon in the URL bar. The whole interaction of the user 458
to the dashboard is also protected by session management. 459
The integrity is very important to ensure the accuracy of the data, i.e., it is coming from the 460
right nodes and is not tampered with during the transmission process due to any interfer- 461
ence. The management of data traffic is crucial and is maintained by the use of firewalls and 462
protocols. The integrity of the developed EnMS data is ensured as; the requests between 463
nodes and servers are sent through TCP protocol rather than via User Datagram Protocol 464
(UDP) socket. TCP guarantees that the information is received in the same order as it was 465
sent along with the track of any information being lost. UDP is faster than TCP but it can 466
lead to receiving newly sent information even before the older ones are received thus losing 467
the concurrency of data. TCP throughput and response time are sufficient enough for the 468
proposed EnMS. The server’s firewall has been configured to allow the listening port of 469
Apache for TCP communication only. 470
The availability of all the devices in the IoT framework helps the authentication mecha- 471
nisms to work properly and protect the information by ensuring the actual availability 472
of the data. Access channels and connected systems all have to work simultaneously to 473
ensure the availability of the data when it is needed. The EnMS dashboard is available 474
24/7, and the nodes are sending data at every user specified intervals. If any node loses 475
the connection, it will automatically, non-intrusively connect to the network due to its 476
hardware configuration and ability to connect to the known saved networks. 477
4. System Validation and Verification 478
To analyze and validate the performance of the EnMS, several in-house testing tech- 479
niques were implied, such as unit testing, integration testing as well as white box and black 480
box testing. The unit testing was done on each module and after integration of every mod- 481
ule, the integration testing was carried out to test the whole system. The white box testing 482
of the embedded circuit hardware was done on solder board as well as on the PCB. After 483
successful testing of all the components, the PCB was transformed into a ready-to-install 484
box for black-box testing. Figure 8 depicts the circuit box ready for installation. 485
Figure 8. Embedded circuit ready for installation.
The in-house validation of the overall system was carried out by a demo setup, as 486
shown in Figure 9. The system was validated by changing and connecting different vendors’ 487
meters one by one to the circuit. The synchronization of the database and live monitoring 488
front-end module was validated for new readings display without reloading the webpage. 489
After the successful validation of the overall system, it was deployed on the actual energy 490
meters at different locations. 491

Figure 9. Demo setup of the developed energy monitoring system.
After demo testing, rigorous experiments were performed at the NED University 492
of Engineering and Technology. For performance evaluation, the EnMS was installed 493
at an energy substation as well as the electronic department of the university for one 494
complete year. The load connected to the substation under observation comprises of 495
Services Department, National Incubation Center (NIC), Civil Engineering Department 496
classes, Office of Student Affairs, Directorate of Industrial Liasion (DIL), Student Cafeteria 497
and Medical Department. The data sent to the server was analyzed for maintaining the 498
integrity of the database. The node (embedded circuit) status and server connection, as 499
well as synchronization of both, were programmed to check the last successful connection 500
of each node to the server. This way malfunction tracking becomes easier i.e., either a node 501
is not able to connect to the server or the server itself is unresponsive. The EnMS was found 502
to be efficient in all aspects. For more rigorous experiments and validation, the system was 503
installed at industrial and commercial clients as well. Further details are elaborated on in 504
the case study below. 505
4.1. Case Study 506
The system was installed at an international industrial client for real-time energy 507
consumption monitoring with industrial supply tariff as depicted in Figure 10, showing the 508
energy meter with embedded energy monitoring node in its installation case. The system 509
is successfully running with real-time synchronization of the node and server. The timely 510
notifications of alarms and warnings and shift-wise consumption breakdowns help the 511
administration in decision-making policies. 512

Figure 10. Proposed system installed at industrial client.
Another node is installed at a commercial fast-food chain branch for real-time monitor- 513
ing and reporting of consumption. The owner of the chain being located remotely has the 514
ease of tracking working hours and managing expenses before the time of actual billing at 515
the end-of-month as shown in Appendix A. The daily and monthly auto-generated reports, 516
summary and visualizations of the consumption as well as monetary division helps in 517
drafting out new administrative policies to save expenses and increase profit. 518
5. Results and Discussion 519
In this study, a low cost and secure real-time EnMS is proposed for monitoring elec- 520
trical consumption. It is easy to integrate with existing systems, at higher levels that are 521
buildings, industries and grids. The total cost of off-the-shelf hardware components used 522
to develop our embedded circuit is 70 USD. The system is end-to-end encrypted using SSL 523
encryption. The software of the system is designed using open-source platforms to keep 524
it easily scalable and customizable. Various experiments are carried out for testing both 525
hardware and software modules. The hardware is tested using black box and white box 526
testing techniques. The accuracy and concurrency of data in the software modules were 527
tested on localhost as well as on Google Postman API. The measuring units of each energy- 528
related parameter are verified as per the datasheet provided by the vendor of the energy 529
meter. The data storing technique is tested for its resiliency on different energy meters. For 530
reliability of the business module of UI, the accumulated billing of consumption according 531
to local as well as the customized tariff was compared with the actual bills generated by the 532
utility providers. The results are accurate as the generated billing matches actual billing. 533
The on-peak and off-peak unit breakdown is validated with the time of use provided by 534
the local tariff. The overall functionality of the EnMS proved to be efficient, smart and 535
fault-tolerant. The actual results of each module’s functionality comply with the expected 536
results. 537
Results of proposed EnMS are compared with different solutions available for device 538
level and building level energy monitoring. Usually, the building-level EnMS are costly 539
due to the inclusion of meters and costly hardware. In an initial survey conducted for 540
gathering the requirements of commercial and industrial consumers residing in the local 541
market, it was found that they usually have a smart meter available on the site. However, 542
that smart meter is only capable of displaying certain parameters on its light emitting diode 543
(LED) display and no previous consumption record is maintained for trends generation. 544
Different consumers prefer different vendors for smart energy meters. Thus, to cater to the 545
needs of the local market, there arises a need for an EnMS compatible with vendor-neutral 546
energy meters. Considering the cost of the available energy monitoring solutions in the 547
market, this study developed a low-cost solution with similar functionality for providing 548
real-time energy consumption information to the end-users. This system provides most of 549
the energy monitoring features to the users at a reasonable cost. 550
Different solutions are commercially available that gives an insight into the energy 551
consumption to the consumer. It includes Uplight with its Behavioral Energy Efficiency 552
solution [43]. The Energy Detective (TED) [16] provides a solution to monitor the entire 553
household consumption, costing 379 USD. Wiser Energy Management [17] is a smart home 554
system for monitoring energy consumption within the household and also generating alerts 555
in case of energy-related anomalies. Its cost is 299 USD. Wattson [44] provides an additional 556
hardware device embedded in the energy monitoring system that can monitor individual 557
home appliances. Tweet a Watt [45], is a solution that provides energy consumption 558
information from individual appliances costing 40 USD. It uses ZigBee technology for 559
wireless communication and stores data on Google. Digi XBee Smart Plug ZigBee [46] is a 560
smart plug that measures and control the energy consumption of electrical devices through 561
a local network. Each Digi XBee Smart plug costs around 84 USD. Another smart plug 562
with similar features is available in the market by the name of Elgato Eve Energy [47], it 563
has an application for iOS only, that shows the historical trend of consumption. Its cost is 564
50 USD per smart plug. The cost of our EnMS’s embedded circuit is 125 USD (70 USD for 565
components + 55 USD for firmware and PCB printing). Table 5 compares the features and 566
cost of commercially available energy monitoring solutions with the proposed system. The 567
cost of the proposed EnMS is listed without the price of smart energy meters. However, 568
after the addition of the smart energy meter’s cost in the local market, the total cost of the 569
system will be 195 USD, which is still less than the compared solutions. 570
Table 5. Comparisons of features and hardware cost of EnMS.
Digi XBee
Elgato Eve
Smart Tweet A Watt TED Wiser Energy Proposed
Parameters Features Energy
Plug Zigbee [45] [16] [17] EnMS
[47]
[46]
Yes (Sold for
Energy
Monitoring Yes Yes $22.99 Yes Yes Yes
Consumption
separately)
Controlling Yes Yes No No No No
Communication Wireless Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Access Website No No Yes Yes No Yes
Android
No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
access
iOS access No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Alarms and
Alerts No No No Yes Yes Yes
Warnings
Billing
Business No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Intelligence
Implementation Device &
Granularity Device Device Device Buildings Building/Grid
Level Building
Price(USD) 84 50 40 379 299 125
The cost constraint of the solution is met by using appropriate low-cost hardware 571
as per the requirements of the proposed solution and open-source software. Due to the 572
high computation capability, sufficient pins and memory, low power consumption and 573
open-source programming firmware Arduino ATmega2560 is used as the main controller. 574
Besides its high calculation capability, it has integrated ADC hence no external Analog-to- 575
Digital converter (ADC) is required. This thoughtful decision leverages advancements to 576
meet the demands of modern energy management while staying consistent with previously 577
published work [27,28]. In [28], the use of ATmega328, has demonstrated its versatility, 578
ease of use, and familiarity. Table 6 below summarizes the cost of the microcontrollers used 579
in IoT solutions of energy monitoring in the literature. 580

As shown in this table, the micro-computers such as Beagle bone Black, Raspberry 581
Pi, and openPicus Flyport provide very high computation but on the other hand, requires 582
external ADCs. Only openPicus Flyport comes integrated with 4 Analogue input/output 583
(I/O) pins while the Beagle bone and Raspberry Pi have none. These are more expensive 584
and consume high power to operate, while the Node micro-controller units (MCUs) based 585
ESP boards have built-in Wi-Fi and are much cheaper as compared to Arduino boards, but 586
they come with a fewer number of pins and low memory storage. Usually, the IoT frame- 587
work faces the trade-off of computation with the cost. The chosen Arduino board balances 588
this trade-off to some extent by providing the advantages of easy to use programming tools, 589
high capacity of memory, more number of pins, along low-cost. Considering all the above 590
factors, Arduino completes the possible weakness of the proposed EnMS’s IoT framework 591
in terms of computation power. 592
Table 6. Cost comparison of microcontrollers used in IoT solutions.
Work done Characteristics Microcontroller Price(USD)

ADC: req.
Wi-Fi: built-in
Power consumption: High
[4,10] Computation: High Raspberry Pi 49.88
Pin Density: Not
Applicable
Memory: Very High
ADC: req.
Wi-Fi: req.
Power consumption: High
[54] Computation: Very High Beagle Bone black 54.40
Pin Density: Not
Applicable
Memory: Very High
ADC: Integrated
Wi-Fi: built-in
Power consumption: Low
[6] openPicus Flyport 50.73
Computation: High
Pin Density: High
Memory: High
ADC: Integrated
Wi-Fi: req.
Power consumption: Low DFRDuino V3
[26] 19.9
Computation: High Microcontroller
Pin Density: Low
Memory: Low
ADC: Integrated
Wi-Fi: req.
[53] PIC 16F877 3.20
Computation: Low
Pin Density: Moderate
Memory: Low
ADC: Integrated
Wi-Fi: built-in
[3] ESP 32 4.61
Computation: High
Pin Density: Low
Memory: Low
ADC: Integrated
Wi-Fi: built-in
[12,22,36] ESP8266 4.11
Computation: Low
Pin Density: Low
Memory: Low
ADC: Integrated
Wi-Fi: req.
The Proposed Arduino ATmega2560 5.5
Computation: High
Pin Density: High
Memory: High
The security of the IoT framework is extremely important but most researchers in open 593
literature of EnMS have not addressed this issue to the full extent. IoT based EnMS need to 594
have security on all three levels of the framework, i.e., node, server and transmission of the 595
data on the network. The summary of the security aspects of different EnMS presented in 596
the open literature is shown in Table 7. 597
598
Table 7. Security Features of IoT based EnMS.
Work done Node Security Server Security Communication Protocol

[6] MAC address confirmation HTTPS TCP
[26] - HTTP -
[4] - HTTP MU-MIMO
MAC address, password,
Proposed EnMS HTTPS / SSL TCP/ Firewall
location confirmation
As shown, most of the research works have used the standards for different levels of 599
security of the IoT framework. The proposed EnMS also uses the standard available security 600
mechanisms for ensuring the security of the overall system at all the intended levels of the 601
IoT framework. However, some of the work in open literature proposed their enhanced 602
algorithms for the security of the EnMS, exemplified by SEMS [27] and [9,10]. These novel 603
algorithms tend to provide security of the system more rigorously, however, proposed 604
EnMS security requirements were satisfied with the off-the-shelf available standard security 605
mechanisms. 606
The UI of the EnMS holds utmost importance when it comes to user interaction and 607
feasibility. Any UI that cover all the aspects of the consumption i.e., in terms of electrical 608
parameters as well as monetary division would benefit the users most. A single UI should 609
be capable of facilitating both the administrators and the end-users with dynamic access 610
control over the provided features. A complete EnMS UI may include various features 611
some of them are engineering features such as the real-time, trends and reporting of the 612
consumption, business features which include monetary division of the consumption and 613
management features which comprises of users as well as nodes remote management. All 614
these features combined to give the end-user a broader perspective of consumption and 615
ease of interaction with the system itself. The authors of [22,23,36] developed a mobile 616
application for trends visualization and billing of the consumption. The authors in [34] 617
created a local dashboard for historical consumption imaging in the form of graphs. Most 618
of the hosted EnMS on website platform are focused on representing real-time consumption 619
[3,20,24,27,37], along with the of trends visualization [9] and remote node management in 620
[31]. Table 8 represents the summary of the UI features of different EnMS presented in the 621
open literature. 622
Table 8. User Interface Features of IoT based EnMS.
Work done Platform Engineering Business Management

Remote
Real-time Trends Billing User
Node
[9] Website (hosted) ✓ ✓
[34] Dashboard (local) ✓
[24] Website (hosted) ✓
[22] Mobile app ✓
[23] Mobile app ✓
[36] Mobile app ✓
[31] Website (hosted) ✓ ✓ ✓
[27] Website (hosted) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Proposed
Website (hosted) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
EnMS
The usability of any product is determined by its ease of use, that’s why a survey was 623
conducted to assess from an identified pool of researchers in the domain of electronics and 624
software to assess the usability of the user interface. The web application was tested by 20 625
users using a questionnaire with a Likert scale from 1 to 5, where 1 stand for poor and 5 626
stands for excellent performance as shown in Table 9. Around 65 percent of users rated 627
with an ‘Excellent’ rating, 29 percent of users rated ‘Very Good’ and only 6 percent of the 628
users’ rated anything below ‘Good’. Table 10 shows the distribution of users’ ratings along 629
with the questionnaire’s evaluation statements. 630
The authors of [26] also used the same Likert scale and similar questionnaire to evaluate 631
their user interface and managed to achieve an average of 4.3 scores for the usability of 632
their user interface. The developed interface for this EnMS achieved an average of 4.5 633
scores for ease of use. The score indicates that it is better in performance and user friendly. 634
Table 9. Evaluation criteria for usability assessment.
Scale Range Interpretation

5 4.6-5 Excellent
4 3.7-4.5 Very Good
3 2.8-3.6 Good
2 1.9-2.7 Fair
1 1.0-1.8 Poor
Table 10. Usability assessment questionnaire.
Questions 5 4 3 2 1 Total Mean Interpretation

I found the web interface easy to use 13 4 3 0 0 20 4.5 Excellent
All the functions (historical trends, 6 12 2 0 0 20 4.2 Very Good
billings, consumption comparisons)
I expected were presented in under-
standable form
The UI is organized and well man- 17 3 0 0 0 20 4.8 Excellent
aged
The website does not lag or crash 5 10 4 0 1 20 4.0 Very Good
The colour scheme and theme are con- 16 4 0 0 0 20 4.8 Excellent
sistent
The navigation options are self- 10 10 0 0 0 20 4.5 Excellent
explanatory
The navigation options are easily 16 4 0 0 0 20 4.8 Excellent
available
The interactive visualizations (bar 16 4 0 0 0 20 4.8 Excellent
graphs, line charts) are easily inter-
pretative
Average
4.5 Very Good
Mean
The performance of EnMS can be evaluated w.r.t the following features: overall cost 635
of the system, ease of use and access, flexibility of installation and security of the data 636
throughout the system. Any EnMS providing all these features would be considered as 637
correct, practical and efficient. An EnMS-Performance Metric (EMS-PM) is introduced as 638
equation (2) for evaluation of the proposed EnMS with the already available ones. The 639
higher value of EnMS-PM indicates an optimal system, and the lower value suggests that 640
the system needs improvement as all the features may not be present. 641
642
C2 + C3 + C4
EMS − PM = (2)
C1
where, 643
C1 (Cost) = Price in USD 644
645
C2 (user-friendly) = [access (website + android + iOS) + alerts + BI] 646
647
C3 (compatible HW) = [energy consumption (monitoring + controlling) + granularity 648
(device + building + grid)] 649
650
C4 (security) = Node + Server 651
652
C1 is overall cost of the system in USD. C2 comprises of user-friendly options that in- 653
cludes mode of access, alerts and business intelligence; where access have three options 654
website, android, and iPhone operating system (iOS). Since website is accessible over 655
any web -enabled peripherals that’s why it is awarded 2 points while both android and 656
iOS have 1 point each. C3 is compatible hardware which comprises of mode of energy 657
consumption including both monitoring and controlling option being awarded 1 point for 658
each and granularity level which is further divided into 3 options that are device having 1 659
point as it is the lowest level of energy monitoring then building having 2 points as it is 660
the intermediate level and finally the grid level which is the highest level having 3 points. 661
C4 is related to the overall security of the system. C4 have 2 options node and server as 662
security is needed on both ends. Since security is equally important on both ends that’s 663
why 1 point is being awarded for each of the option . 664
Table 11. Performance evaluation w.r.t derived EnMS-PM.
Workdone c1 c2 c3 c4 EnMS-PM
[46] 84 0 1+1 1 0.035
[47] 50 1+1 2+1 1 0.120
[45] 62.99 2+1+1 1+1 0 0.095
[16] 379 2+1+1 1+1 0 0.015
[17] 299 1+1+1+1 1+2 1 0.026
Proposed EnMS 125 2+1+1+1+1 2+3 1+1 0.104
Table 11 shows the calculated performance evaluation for work done in the literature. 665
The comparison indicates that [47] outperforms the proposed EnMS but it is implemented 666
on the device level, hence cannot be directly compared with the proposed solution. [16] and 667
[17] are implemented on the building level having a direct comparison with the proposed 668
EnMS. The calculated performance evaluation metric indicates that the proposed EnMS 669
outperforms the related work. 670
According to the daily activities of different localities, different utility providers charge 671
different rates based on Time of Use or Peak hours. Peak hours are defined as the busiest 672
hours in terms of electricity consumption that’s why the utility providers charge extra 673
per unit to discourage the usage the electricity in the peak hours. In Pakistan, on-peak 674
and off-peak hours are applied to commercial and industrial buildings, and in May 2019, 675
the major utility provider i.e. K-Electric announced that it will impose peak hours on the 676
residential building as well in the near future [55]. Thus, a monitoring system is more than 677
ever needed now for effective demand-side management. The developed EnMS is capable 678
to cater all these requirements i.e, low-cost, secure and developed indigenously for the load 679
profile generation in a customized way. 680
6. Conclusions 681
This work reports a low-cost EnMS that provides a mechanism to quantify the 682
expenditure of energy within an installed site, identify any potential waste of energy and 683
helps in assessing the impact of any intervention taken to mitigate the problem. Thus, 684
the presented system is a valuable tool to control the energy expenses at an installation 685
while having a quantifiable impact on the output effectively helping to overcome the 686
challenge of energy crisis on the demand side. The proposed real-time EnMS generates 687
customized consumption load profiles of the consumers, which are remotely accessible to 688
the end-users via any web-enabled peripheral. The system provides a low cost, versatile 689
hardware, and software solution that would raise awareness in the user’s habits of energy 690
consumption, based on real data usage. The development includes nodes, a server, and an 691
online dashboard. The production of a working node and communication with the server, 692
supporting multiple nodes connections as well as hosting a user interface via web pages, 693
calculating and visualizing energy consumption, recording data, generating alerts and 694
performing scheduled tasks all have been implemented successfully as demonstrated in this 695
research. Moreover, in many LMICs, commercial and industrial organizations cannot afford 696
a state-of-the-art EnMS from top vendors. This is because the facilities are built over time 697
and the energy meters are typically from different brands. Without an estimate about the 698
energy utilization patterns, the viability of any project and hence the sustainability is always 699
under question. Our low-cost EnMS helps to establish the energy consumption where and 700
when needed, reducing the cost and ensuring the sustainability of the solution. This solution 701
not only benefits large/medium scale clients but also makes it commercially feasible for 702
small scale clients, including residential, commercial and industrial consumers, to adopt 703
the system. The comprehensive nature of our EnMS, achieved through the use of low-cost 704
hardware components and open-source software, enables effective data gathering, storing, 705
and displaying data to the user, all within a single platform. The major achievements of the 706
project include a viable solution for secure monitoring of real-time energy consumption, 707
through a remote online dashboard using low-cost developed hardware and open-source 708
software, a detailed log of usage pattern visualization as well as informed warnings to 709
alter the behaviour of the user towards daily consumption, and a module for monetary 710
projected value and accumulated billing using the local energy provider tariffs to give an 711
insight into the consumption in financial terms. 712
This study demonstrates a baseline for the researchers to extend the developed system for 713
a more detailed and predictive load profile generation for predictive maintenance of the 714
client’s consumption. Also, in future work, the researchers aim to implement a blind colour 715
palette for extending the outreach of the proposed system. 716
Author Contributions: Conceptualization, Khan H.R and Qazi S.A; methodology, Khan H.R., Kazmi 717
M. and Lubaba; software, Lubaba and Bin Khalid H.; validation, Lubaba and Bin Khalid H.; formal 718
analysis, Kazmi M. and Lubaba; investigation, Kazmi M. and Lubaba; resources, Alam U, Arshad K, 719
and Assaleh K; data curation, Alam U, Arshad K, Assaleh K and Bin Khalid H.; writing—original 720
draft preparation, Lubaba; writing—review and editing, Kazmi M. and Lubaba; visualization, Kazmi 721
M. and Lubaba; supervision, Khan H.R., Kazmi M. and Qazi S.A.; project administration, Khan H.R. 722
and Qazi S.A.; funding acquisition, Alam U, Arshad K, and Assaleh K 723
authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.” 724
Funding: This research is supported by Ajman University Internal Research Grant No. 2023-IRG- 725
ENIT-3. The research findings presented in this paper are solely the author(s)’ responsibility 726
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable 727
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable 728
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. 729

Abbreviations 730
The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript: 731
732
ADC Analog-to-Digital Converter
AES Advanced Encryption Standard
AJAX Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
API Application Programming Interface
CIA Confidentiality Integrity Availability
CPU Central Processing Unit
CRUD Create, Read, Update and Delete
CSS Cascading Style Sheet
DAQ Data Acquisition
DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
DNS Domain Name Server
ECDHE Elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman
EnMS Energy Monitoring System
GCM Galois/Counter Mode
GUI Graphical User Interface
HCI Human Computer Interface
HTML Hyper Text Markup Language
HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol
HTTPS HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure
IaaS Infrastructure as a Service
IP Internet Protocol
ISP Internet Service Provider
JSON JavaScript Object Notation
LAMP Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP
LMIC Low and Middle-Income Country
LTS Long Term Support 733
MAC Media Access Control

MDPI Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
ML Machine Learning
PaaS Platform as a Service
PCB Printed Circuit Board
PDO PHP Data Object
PHP Hypertext Preprocessor
PRF Pseudo-Random Function
RAM Random Access Memory
RDBMS Relational Database Management System
RSA Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, the inventors of the technique
RWD Responsive Web Design
SaaS Software as a Service
SHA-256 Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit
SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SQL Structured Query Language
SSL Secure Socket Layer
TCP Transmission Control Protocol
TLS Transport Layer Security
UDP User Datagram Protocol
UI User Interface
URL Uniform Resource Locator
USB Universal Serial Bus
VPS Virtual Private Server
XML eXtensible Markup Language
Appendix A. Appendix: Daily Energy Consumption Report 734
Instrux-Daily-Report-2020-01-16
Daily Energy Consumption Report

User Information
Location Oh My Grill Device Selec Tariff A2 - General Supply Tariff -
Commercial
Energy Trend
Daily Energy Consumption

Total Energy Off Peak Units On Peak Units Off Peak Ratio On Peak Ratio Comments
112.57 KWh 85.02 KWh 27.548 KWh 75.53% 24.47% Consumption
breakdown is
Good
Daily Energy Consumption Charges Estimated

On_Peak Charges Off_Peak Charges On_Peak amt/hr Off_Peak amt/hr
595 PKR 1,329 PKR 148.8 PKR 66.4 PKR
*Utility Charges are shown in the above table.
The pie chart visualizes the contribution of On Peak and

Off Peak units consumption to your total bill.
1/2
Figure A1. This is a wide figure.

Appendix B. Appendix: Monthly Energy Consumption Report 735
Instrux-Monthly-Report-11-2019
Info Energy Consumption Report

User Information
Location Oh My Grill Device Selec Tariff A2 - General Supply Tariff -
Commercial
Energy Trend
Monthly Energy Consumption

Total Energy Off Peak Units On Peak Units Off Peak Ratio On Peak Ratio Comments
5,008.71 KWh 3,860.83 KWh 1,147.88 KWh 76.40% 23.60% Consumption
breakdown is
Good
Monthly Energy Consumption Charges Estimated

On_Peak Off_Peak On_Peak Off_Peak On_Peak amt/hr Off_Peak amt/hr
Charges Charges amt/day amt/day
24,794.1 PKR 60,344.8 PKR 826.5 PKR 2011 PKR 206.6 PKR 100.6 PKR
*Utility Charges are shown in the above table.
1/2
Figure A2. This is a wide figure.

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sustainability

A Low-Cost Energy Monitoring System with Universal 4

Compatibility and Real-time Visualization for Enhanced 5

Accessibility and Power Savings 6

Assaleh3,4 , and Saad Ahmed Qazi 1,2 8

1 Neurocomputation Lab, National Center of Artificial Intelligence, Karachi 75270, Pakistan 9

Ajman University, Ajman, UAE 13

Published: End-to-end secure architecture; Visualization 39

Copyright: © 2024 by the authors. 1. Introduction 40

Attribution (CC BY) license (https://

Sustainability 2024, 1, 0. https://doi.org/10.3390/su1010000 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability

resources efficiently is an economical solution. This addresses energy crises by reducing 49

waste by monitoring and analyzing energy consumption in real-time. Consumers signifi- 54

real-time through a user interface (UI) [6]. 62

Computing platform benefits the decision-makers in applying the real-time analysis in a 68

more flexible and scalable way. 69

financial viability [6] by demand-side management. 88

arises the requirement of developing an economical EnMS capable of collecting electrical 96

tablets, etc.) providing customized visual breakdown to the client. 98

contributions as follows: 128

Both device-to-cloud and cloud-to-user communications are end-to-end encrypted to 145

provide complete security to the system. 146

section 6 concludes the work and presents future direction. 152

2. Related Work 153

(SEMS) [27] makes a distinctive contribution by implementing a multi-tiered architecture 173

on an IoT server or cloud. 181

controlling residential consumption at the device-level. 189

breakdown as per the actions of the machining workshop. 200

decision-makers [34]. Another application of EnMS is on clusters of the building or on a 205

open IT infrastructure to different commercial vendors [18]. 212

and users. 250

renewable energy resources [4,20]. 262

of accommodating residential, commercial and industrial consumers; such as buildings, 268

institutes, homes, and even grids, all in one platform. 269

3. Design Methodology 270

of a low-cost hardware circuit, a secure communication medium, and a customizable 272

consumption of usage. The architecture of the EnMS is discussed below. 277

3.1. Overall System Architecture 278

of connecting to a wired or wireless network exhibiting HyperText Transfer Protocol/ 291

programming languages), but all support web browsers by default. 296

Figure 1. Proposed energy monitoring system architecture

3.2. Technological Breakdown of the Architecture 297

about consumption-related parameters. The technological breakdown is elaborated in the 305

subsections 3.2.1, 3.2.2, 3.2.3. 306

Energy Monitoring Node Cloud Server The User Interface (UI)

Hardware Services Features/ Modules

Internet Infrastructure HTML, CSS, JS, JSON,

Figure 2. Technological breakdown of energy monitoring system

3.2.1. Energy Monitoring Node 307

It currently supports meters from Schneider[38], Elmeasure[39], Crompton[40], Ziegler[41] 326

communication technologies. 328

Table 1. Circuit components with description.

Circuit Components Function Communication Technology

3.2.2. Cloud Architecture 329

Table 2. Server hardware configuration.

Lock triggers Events and Web Interface

Node (many) Server (one)

Figure 3. Data flow of the energy monitoring system.

3.2.3. The User Interface (UI) 365

each of the respective goals provided by the developed EnMS. 382

GOAL USER OPTIONS / OUTPUTS USER INTERFACE

OPTIONS: Select device from the

OPTIONS: Set Voltage, Current,