Advanced digital smart meter for dynamic billing, tamper detection and consumer awareness

Developing countries are struggling to meet the electric power demands of fast expanding economies. Added to this is the poor infrastructure which has not kept pace with the increasing demand. Quality of supply too is gaining in importance. Poor metering and billing has rendered huge losses for utilities. Tampering and fraud is also rampant. Introducing Advanced Metering Infrastructure will go a long way in mitigating many of these problems. This paper details the development of Advanced Metering Infrastructure incorporating features to monitor supply parameters and perform functions like real time billing and alerts against overvoltage and overcurrent. The proposed meter is to utilize the capabilities of ADE7758 IC as well as microcontrollers such as ATMega16.