Edinburgh Napier University

  The design of a smart electricity meter relies on the technological needs of both utilities and customers, thus helping to face specific problems in the management and distribution of electricity. The most common issue is electricity theft that can be defined as the illegal use of electricity. Therefore, utility companies are on the lookout for ways to track and deter this fraud. This paper propose design for smart meter which presents a user-friendly design of smart energy meter that can detect the most common forms of theft in user premises in real-time. The design mainly consists of Arduino UNO, ACS712 current sensor, voltage sensor, and GSM module. Initially, some electrical parameters like voltage, current, and power are calculated. In addition, two current sensors are used that measures the electrical parameters of both phase and neutral lines. After that the electric theft is detected by comparing the values of these two sensors. Besides, a prevention mechanism is designed that prevent the electric theft by generating warning messages on LCD mounted on smart meter as well as sending the theft detection messages to utility through GSM and turn off the supply for user with the help of relay. Furthermore, the proposed system is simulated in Proteus under normal condition and various theft scenarios and later verified via detailed simulation analysis. Finally, the system’s ability is checked by implementing different theft techniques, and the figures in the paper indicate the warning messages associated with each theft scenario.