Research Article Volume 6 Issue No. 5

Transcription

1 DOI / ISSN IJESC Research Article Volume 6 Issue No. 5 Image Extraction-IE Approach to Extract Information from Analog and Digital KWh Meters Aswathy K. 1, Narayanan P. P. 2 PG Scholar 1, Assistant Professor 2 Royal College of Engineering and Technology, Akkikavu, Trissur aswathynandana555@gmail.com 1, narayananpp00@gmail.com 2 Abstract: Advanced Metering Infrastructure(AMI) devices are used to improve the system observability.an ordinary energy meter can be turned into an AMI device by several ways. One of the suggested methods is the usage of an IPbased smart meter. But, due to the high cost and practical difficulties, this method cannot be used for large number of users. An economic method for the implementation of AMI device is to use image processing for extracting the energy information from an energy meter. This method is also known as Image Extraction(IE)approach, in which the image of an energy meter is captured by a camera enabled mobile device and is sent to a central database using the Internet. The central database first analyses and then processes the image and extracts the energy information more accurately by using certain algorithms. After analysis, the billing can be done and the electricity bill can be sent to the user. The IE approach reduces the effort of manual reading and the system installation can be done by the users themselves without requiring the help of a technician as the system only requires a mobile camera device and a stand support. The frequency of data collection may be once or twice in a month. Keywords: Image Extraction approach, AMI devices I. INTRODUCTION The electricity crisis is increasing day-by day and has become a major issue[1]. This fact made the development progress to be at a slower rate. The increased cost of electricity made this utility very much expensive and unfriendly to many people. In India, the electricity demand is at its peak. Although the energy consumption is increasing, its wastage is also increasing more rapidly. odometer-like display, where each dial is indicated as singledigit from 0 to 9. In such type of display, pointers are used to indicate each digit. Normally 4 or 5 pointers are used where, adjacent pointers rotate in opposite directions(if one pointer rotates in clockwise direction, then neighboring pointer will rotate in the counter clockwise direction). This happens due to the gearing mechanism. The energy consumption is measured by using an electric meter, energy meter or electricity meter, which is defined as a device which reads or measures the amount of electric energy consumption by a home, organization, or any electrically powered device. In the case of houses, single-phase energy meters are widely deployed for the purpose of measuring the electric energy consumption. The reading is taken for billing purposes. These measurements will be calibrated in some billing units such as watt hour [Wh], kilowatt hour [kwh], which are taken once every billing period. The operation of energy meters is accomplished by measuring the instantaneous values of voltage (Volts) and current (Amperes) continuously to obtain the energy consumed (kilowatt-hours, joules etc.). Single-phase KWh meters are categorized into two: Electromechanical (Analog) meters and Electronic (Digital) meters. An electromechanical induction meter operates by counting the number of revolutions of a non-magnetic, metal disc. This disc will rotate at a speed which is proportional to the power passing through the meter. Thus the energy consumption is proportional to the number of revolutions. Electromechanical energy meters are further divided into two based on how the consumed energy is displayed. They are dial pointer type and cyclometer type. cyclometer type, an FIGURE 1 SINGLE PHASE ELECTROMECHANICAL INDUCTION TYPE ANALOG ENERGY METERS (A)DIAL POINTER TYPE (B )CYCLOMETER TYPE An electronic energy meter consists of the following elements: Power supply Metering engine Processing and communication engine (microcontroller) Other add-on modules (RTC, LCD, communication ports etc) International Journal of Engineering Science and Computing, May

2 visit the electricity office and wait unless the bill gets corrected. These issues are due to human intervention. To avoid these problems, automatic meter reading system is required. B. Block Diagram FIGURE 2 SINGLE PHASE ELECTRONIC DIGITAL ENERGY METER II. LITERATURE SURVEY In paper [2], the classical and modern techniques or solutions for collecting information from smart meters is described. Also, an AMI system is explained in detail. In an AMI system, number of smart meters is connected to a gateway. The connection is made through power lines and the communication between the gateway and a central computer is enabled through GSM. The implementation of the power line communication is done with an industrial bus, which is called LonWork. An idea about AMI system based on PLC (Power Line Communication) and data collecting from the smart meters by a gateway is provided. In paper [3], the inferences of a detailed research on AMI are given. AMI is not considered as a single technology; but instead, it is explained as a properly configured infrastructure which is used to integrate a lot of techniques for achieving some of its goals. The AMI system infrastructure includes smart meters, communication networks, Meter Data Management Systems (MDMS).The collected data must be integrated into some interfaces and software application platforms. In paper [4], methods to address the issues on different kinds of intrusions are detailed. A sensor is introduced which is commonly called as a specification-based intrusion detection sensor. Such a sensor is used for the accurate monitoring of the traffic on the edges of an AMI network. III. PROPOSED SYSTEM MODEL The communication between the customers and the utilities is enhanced while using AMI systems. The consumer gets an opportunity to decide the amount of energy they can consume with minimum energy wastage. This can be made possible by using modern technologies and also by upgrading the operating systems. A. Problem Definition The meter reading methods used today have too many errors, because of the human intervention. Employees from the electricity board have to visit each house for the purpose of taking the meter reading and thus he can take readings from approximately 100 meters each day. The employee will be forced to revisit a place if the house is closed. If the house is closed for more than 2 months the bill is calculated by taking an average of the bills of previous months and which is not a correct way. Also, if a consumer gets a faulty bill he needs to The name image extraction(ie)approach is given to the proposed method because the amount of energy consumed is extracted and measured accurately from the images of energy meters. The consumer himself can capture the images of energy meter by using a camera-enabled mobile device. First of all, turn the camera of the mobile device ON and place the mobile in front of the energy meter on a stand support. Adjust the position of the mobile as well as the stand so that good quality images can be captured. Note that the display of the energy meter is clearly visible. The captured images are then sent to a central database by using Internet. There the image is processed and the amount of energy consumed is computed. FIGURE 3 ILLUSTRATION OF IMAGE EXTRACTION APPROACH. The system shown in figure 3 is applicable for both analog and digital meters. For example, the case of dial type analog meter is considered. Electromechanical analog meters are totally unable of establishing a network connection. Also, they require manual readings to be taken periodically. The IE approach makes use of live image transmission technology in which the captured images are directly trans-mitted to the central database. For more accurate reading, we can deploy a mobile device which is having a timer camera for capturing images in every m minutes. It will be very helpful if the mobile has got an automatic upload function so that the photos can be automatically uploaded to the database. The total estimated power in kw is computed based on a finite difference between two photos. estimated=( dial ( ) dial ( 1)) / (1) Where, E dial (t) and E dial (t 1) are the images of the dial type analog meter taken at successive time intervals. Assume that the photos are taken in every 10 minutes, then m = (1/6) for an hourly base. C. Algorithm of Proposed System The algorithm for the proposed system is given below: International Journal of Engineering Science and Computing, May

3 1) Start 2) Initialize camera and start communication 3) Capture image with camera 4) Send image to PC 5) Recognize characters/numbers from image 6) Calculate Bill 7) Display GUI with image, Units consumed and Bill amount. 8) Now with respect to previous reading GUI will Show the bill. 9) Stop IV. IMAGE EXTRACTION (IE) APPROACH The energy information is extracted from both analog and digital energy meters by applying image processing techniques. Hence the proposed method is named as IE approach. First, the image of the energy meter should be cropped to remove. After that binarization is applied. Then different techniques are applied based on the type of energy meter to compute the exact value. A. Algorithm for IE Approach The algorithm for the image extraction approach at the central computer is given below: c) Creating a template which contains digits from 0 to 9 d) Comparing the image of the numbers read from the meter with each number in the template and finding their similarity. e) Repeating the process unless all the digits are identified f) Estimating the energy consumption 6) If the selected meter is digital, then perform the following operations c) Creating a template which contains digits from 0 to 9 d) Comparing the image of the numbers in the LCD display read from the meter with each number in the template and finding their similarity. e) Repeating the process unless all the digits are identified f) Estimating the energy consumption 7) Displaying the extracted energy information in a Microsoft Excel Worksheet. 8) Stop B. Flowchart for IE Approach Figure 4 shows the flowchart representation of IE approach. A flowchart can be defined as the pictorial representation of an algorithm. 1) Start 2) Select the type of energy meter by entering letter from the following: a) a: Analog meter b) n: Normal (cyclometer type) meter c) d: Digital meter 3) Select the meter from number of corresponding meters 4) If the selected meter is analog, then perform the following operations c) Morphological Operations d) Confirming the center of the circle shaped dials e) Matrix border interception to get the intersecting points f) Calculating the angle that is made by the pointer from the intersection points. This is known as Pointer extraction g) Estimating energy consumption 5) If the selected meter is normal, then perform the following operations FIGURE 4 SIMPLIFIED FLOWCHART OF IE APPROACH. International Journal of Engineering Science and Computing, May

4 V. SIMULATION RESULTS All the simulations were done using MATLAB and the simulation results for a dial type analog energy meter are considered Figure 6.1 shows the Matlab command window which appears when the program is executed. It allows the user to select the type of energy meter from which information must be extracted. The user can select the meter by entering the following letters: 1) a: Analog meter 2) n: Normal (cyclometer type) meter 3) d: Digital meter After entering a in the command window, analog meters are selected as the type of energy meters we need. We can now select our meter from number of other analog meters. Figure 6.2 shows a selection window for this purpose. For convenience, a single analog meter is considered here.figure 6.3 displays the selected analog meter again in a window. Now from the image of the meter, the information bearing portion, that means, the portion of the dials is cropped out and which is shown in figure 6.4. After cropping out the dial portion several processes such as image pre-processing, dilation etc., are performed. Finally, the correct value is extracted from the image by applying pointer extraction algorithm. The extracted value is displayed in a Microsoft Excel Worksheet and is shown in figure 6.5. FIGURE 5 SELECTING THE TYPE OF ENERGY METER FIGURE 8 CROPPED AREA FIGURE 9 ESTIMATED VALUE VI. CONCLUSION The IE approach is developed for the automatic extraction of data from the images or simply photos of analog meters captured by a camera-enabled mobile device and hence the use of IP based smart meters can be avoided. This IE approach can be extended for digital meters also. Besides, the effort of manual reading and the higher deployment cost of smart meters can also be avoided. VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We express our sincere gratitude to GOD, our parents and all others who helped us to do this project successfully. FIGURE 6 SELECTING THE METER VIII. REFERENCES [1] Yachen Tang, Chee-Wooi Ten,Chaoli Wang,and Gordon Parker, Extrac-tion of Energy Information From Analog Meters Using Image Processing. in IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 6, NO. 4, JULY 2015 [2] M. Popa, Data collecting from smart meters in an advanced metering infrastructure. in Proc. 15th IEEE Int. Conf. Intell. Eng. Syst. (INES), Poprad, Slovakia, Jun. 2011, pp FIGURE 7 SELECTED METER [3] R. Mohassel, A. Fung, F. Mohammadi, and K. Raahemifar, A survey on advanced metering infrastructure Int. J. Elect. Power Energy Syst., vol. 63, pp , Dec International Journal of Engineering Science and Computing, May

5 [4] R. Berthier and W. Sanders, Specication-based intrusion detection for advanced metering infrastructures in Proc. IEEE 17th Pac. Rim Int. Symp. Depend. Comput. (PRDC), Pasadena, CA, USA, Dec. 2011, pp [5] J. Zhou, J. Hu, and Q. Yi, Scalable distributed communication architec-tures to support advanced metering infrastructure in smart grid IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst., vol. 23, no. 9, pp , Sep [6] Z. Houidi and M. Meulle, A new VPN routing approach for large scale networks in Proc. 18th IEEE Int. Conf. Netw. Protocols (ICNP), Kyoto, Japan, Oct. 2010, pp [7] Y. Guo, C.-W. Ten, and P. Jirutitijaroen, Online data validation for distribution operations against cybertampering IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 29, no. 2, pp , Mar [8] Tang, Yachen, Extraction of Pictorial Energy Information from Cam-pus Unmetered Buildings Using Image Processing Techniques, Mas-ter s Thesis, Michigan Technological University, Available at [9] Manisha V. Shinde, Pradip W. Kulkarni,Reading of Energy Meter based on Image Processing Technology,Technovision-2014, 1st International Conference at SITS, Narhe, Pune on April 5-6, 2014 Author Details Aswathy K received the B.tech. degree in electronics and communication from Calicut University, India in She is currently pursuing the M.tech. degree at Calicut University in communication engineering. Her research interests mainly include image processing and communication network, future communication system. Narayanan P. P. working as Assistant professor in Royal college of engineering and technology. He received the MDes degree in Electronic Systems from IIIT D&M, Kancheepuram and the B.tech. Degree in electronics and communication from Calicut University, India. He worked as a Lecturer in Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at GPTC Kunnamkulam. His areas of Interest are micro electo mechanical systems, electronic devices, analog electronics and communication engineering. International Journal of Engineering Science and Computing, May