Development of ARM processor based electricity theft control system using GSM network

Abstract

Electricity theft is a common practice in developing countries which cannot be controlled by the governments due to lack of technology. Emerging trends such as Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) eliminate the need of person visiting each house but this advancement further increases Non-Technical losses (NTL) because of no regular inspection at the residence. However traditional meter reading by human operator is inefficient to meet the future residential development needs. This paper proposes a new system based on ARM-Cortex M3 processor to protect the energy meter from phase line bypassing, neutral line disconnection, whole meter bypassing and meter tampering. A SMS automatically send to utility server through Global System for Mobile (GSM) network when these measures detected. In this paper a novel method is proposed to solve the problem with AMR systems without affecting its major advantage of remote monitoring. Integrating this new feature into smart meters provides a robust metering solution.