2014 International Conference on Cloud Computing and Internet of Things (CCIOT 2014)

Smart Agent Based Prepaid Wireless Energy

Meter
Au Thien Wan, Suresh Sankaranarayanan and Siti Nurafifah Binti Sait
School of computing and Informatics
Institut Teknologi Brunei
Brunei Darussalam
e-mail: [email protected] , [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract— Prepaid meter (PM) is getting very popular 2,145 GWH. The total cost saving as a result was 30 million
especially in developing countries. There are many advantages to Brunei dollars [13][14].
use prepaid meter as opposed to postpaid meter both to the
utility provider and to the consumer. Brunei Darussalam has However PM does not have wireless feature for meter
adopted PM but it is not intelligent and not wireless enabled. reading and the utility company does not have real time
Reading meters and topping up balance are still done manually. information on how much energy units are consumed, balance
Utility provider does not have information on the usage statistics units for each household and how much users spend on energy
and has only limited functionalities in the grid control. So monthly. The users are unable to monitor their energy usage on
accordingly a novel software agent based wireless prepaid energy a regular basis wirelessly too.
meter was developed using Java Agent Development
Environment (JADE-LEAP) allowing agent from utility provider Based on the current gaps and the motivations in relation to
to query wireless energy meter for energy values of every using a Wireless Prepaid Meter (WPM), we developed a
household. These statistics can be used for statistical computation simulated Smart Agent based Wireless Prepaid Meter
of the power consumed and for policy and future planning. (SAWPM) using Java Agent Development Environment
(JADE-LEAP) agent development kit [15][16]. This research
Keywords— Wireless Prepaid Smart Meter, JADE, LEAP, does not concentrate on wireless prepaid meter design but on
Prepaid Meter development of smart agent in wireless prepaid meter for
utility provider and consumers. The system here communicates
I. INTRODUCTION by means of agents mimicking the job of human to collect the
The traditional method of electricity billing system balance from meters periodically for consumers and utility
involves meter readers to periodically visit every house to take provider.
readings. There are many issues related to this method such as Section II of the paper provides some background research
taking wrong readings, lack of meter readers, and houses in survey related to energy meter. Section III details the system
very remote areas, meters in inconvenient location and so forth. architecture of Smart Agent based Wireless Prepaid Meter
Many technological advancement have been carried out and (SAWPM). Section IV describes the energy meter simulating
one such is employing software agent replicating human beings energy values consumed for household. Section V shows the
to collect energy values by means of power line functionalities of DES agent at the energy department. Section
communication [1][2][3][4][5]. In some cases, wireless VI shows agent in Wireless Prepaid Meter (WPM). Section VII
technologies are used where energy meter embedded with concludes the paper with future work.
Zigbee sensor making it wireless accessible for retrieving
energy values for billing [6][7][8][9][10][11] and some even II. LITERATURE REVIEW
employed GPRS for retrieving the energy units for billing from
Zigbee based wireless remote meter [12]. A. Agent based Remote Energy Meter
The first pioneering research work that was done [1] using
Prepaid meters (PM) offer many advantages both to the
software agents have been used to access energy meters in the
utility provider and the consumers. To the utility provider, this
house remotely for recording the units used and accordingly
reduces many issues tremendously arising from meter readers
the amount calculated. These agents have been developed in
such as delays, wrong and infrequent meter reading resulting in
Java-RMI. The agent then replicates the human agent who
bulk amount of billing that consumers would need to pay and
visits the house to read the meter.
further consequent in not paying, disputes and so forth. One of
the main motivation of using PM is energy conservation. Research was further done in developing agents for remote
Brunei Darussalam for example is very actively heading energy meter reading for billing, where energy department
towards achieving energy conservation and the introduction of server is connected to domestic clients by means of the power
PM is one of the initiatives. With the introduction of PM, the line [2]. In this system software agent has been employed to
total electrical power usage in 2012 in Brunei Darussalam in move from the energy department to the domestic energy meter
the housing sector was 1,879 GWH, which was a reduction of which then picks up the energy meter data and returns to the
12.4 per cent compared to the total usage in 2011, which was energy department for lodging the data [3].

978-1-4799-4764-5/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 77 Changchun, CHINA

B. Wireless Remote Postpaid Energy Meter also handles the exchange of values between devices for the
In the Sultanate of Oman for instance, a model of Wireless querying tasks.
Automatic Meter Reading System (WAMRS) has been
developed [7] in which the wireless communication is based on
IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee) standard and security is implemented
by following the Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS)
protocol. Successful demonstration of WAMRS prototype has
made it possible to be implemented in Oman on a larger scale
for meter reading applications. The main goal of this research
was to send periodical readings of an electricity meter
wirelessly to a server in the billing office of the utility
company.
In [10], GPRS communication has been used to retrieve
meter values from Zigbee Wireless remote meter of water,
electricity and gas for computation. This system has low cost
and a little power consumption, while it has great extension
and security.
C. Wireless Prepaid energy Meter
In [17], a GSM-based Energy Recharge system for prepaid
metering has been developed for Nigerian Power Sector
towards the metering and billing system. The GSM-based
Energy Recharge Interface contains a prepaid card equivalent
to a mobile SIM card. The prepaid card communicates with the Fig. 1. Agent based Wireless Smart Prepaid Meter System Architecture
power utility using GSM communication network. Once the
prepaid card value has reached zero, the consumer load is A. System Architecture Design
disconnected from the utility supply by a latching relay.
The system architecture shown in Fig.1 is aimed to support
III. SMART AGENT BASED WIRELESS PREPAID METER both the JADE Agents platform and modules of the proposed
ARCHITECTURE system in the best possible way, involving all JADE Agents
implemented devices and the position of databases in the given
The Smart Agent based Wireless prepaid meter architecture environment.
we proposed consists of three modules; the first is the wireless
energy meter that can generate units consumed by the energy The system started with the energy simulator generating
meter which is used further for the calculation of every data. values for energy consumption. These values are saved and
The second handles energy monitoring tasks which includes will be used for balance unit calculations in wireless energy
data such as balance units and total top up amount at meter. The values are then supplied to the wireless energy
Department of Electrical Services (DES). The later will handle meter and further to all active JADE agent devices as shown
the exchange of values between devices for querying tasks above. The DES backup database will become the medium of
from user’s mobile handset in providing continuous transfer of displaying data in the DES. This is to ensure precise updated
balance units, top-up amount, in addition to triggering the alert records such as units consumed, balance units and total top up
system when the units hit a certain threshold amount. Fig 1 for each meter to be revised every 5th of every month. The User
shows the overall architecture design of a Smart Agent Based Android application and wireless energy meter required logins
Prepaid Wireless Energy Meter System. The architecture before entering the system. This is to ensure security
design consists of four main modules: authentication for the system
• Energy meter simulator which can generate energy units B. System Database
consumed by the household which is used further for the There are two different databases involved in this system:
calculation of balance units and for subsequent actions at
the Wireless energy meter as a replacement of physical 1. Energy Meter database
energy meter. The purpose of this is to store following information as
• The JADE Agent Main container for DES which can shown in Fig 2:
destroy or combine all active agents in the same • Login information for both energy meter and user
environment serving its purposes. Android applications (user logins and meter logins table).
• JADE-LEAP Agent [18][19] for Zigbee enabled Wireless • Units consumed generated by the energy meter simulator
Energy meter. (energy units table).
• JADE-LEAP Agent [18][19] for User Android Application • Data for balance unit calculations
for monitoring and querying balance units wirelessly. It

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 The energy consumption values generated is according to
the daily appliances usage of each household and their peak
and off peak hour values from DES Brunei.

Fig. 3. Database for Department of Electrical Services (DES)

Fig. 2. Database tables for Wireless Smart Prepaid Meter

2. DES Backup Database

This database is for back up any data sent from the user
Android application for the calculation of total top-up amount Fig. 4. Peak and Off-peak Hours
and from the wireless energy meter balance units. These values
will only be displayed on DES main page every 5th of the TABLE I. ENERGY CONSUMPTION UNITS OF DAILY HOUSEHOLDS
month for monitoring purposes. The table contains these values APPLIANCES
as shown in Fig.3
UNITS CONSUMED
APPLIANCES
• Meter number of each household. DAILY IN KWH
• Timestamp Air-Conditioner 288
• Balance units Aquarium 5
• Top-up amount Ceiling Fan 21

• Total top-up amount Hair Dryer 24

Computer 27
IV. IMPLEMENTATION OF ENERGY METER SIMULATOR Laptop 9
Based on previous work [18], the energy simulator was Lightings ( 3 units) 10
implemented using JAVA language. Similar to daily energy Radio 1
consumption and current energy meter, the simulator has the Refrigerator 96
features for peak and off-peak hour, the energy units that has Rice Cooker 54
been consumed as well as giving a graphical indication of the Vacuum 59
time and day. Washing Machine 41
The Energy simulator periodically generates the energy
consumption units according to the data and information given 2. Graphical time-indication panel shows the night and
by the DES and Singapore Power (Singapore utility provider) day, off-peak and peak hours.
as shown in Table 1. Once the units are generated, the values
V. IMPLEMENTATION OF JADE AGENTS IN DES
are merged with the peak and off-peak hours given by utilities
provider as shown in Fig 4. The DES is responsible for the operation and development
in generating, transmitting and distributing electricity to the
In the wireless energy simulator graphical interface, the end users. Hence the DES JADE agent serves as the main
implementation are divided into two panels shown in Fig 5: container of the agent system environment which has the
1. The device panel where all the daily household authority and function to kill the agents and monitor the
appliances are listed and the values are generated transfer of data between all the agents in the system
dynamically according to the peak hours and power. environment. Data such as balance units and total top up
These values are saved to the WAMP server database amount will go through the DES database to ensure up to date
for later use in JADE Agent applications.

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records of each household meter. These values will only be Balance units = Total balance units after topping up-
displayed in the DES main page every 5th of every month. units consumed
• To send a reminder to User Android application once
the balance units hits certain ranges.

Fig. 5. Energy Meter Simulator

The database in the DES has the function to monitor and

access the data given by other JADE agents in the environment
such as balance units and top-up value every 5th of the month.
To achieve the function, DES backup database will serve to
store all the data before the accessed date. It contains only one
table which hold the data of meter number, balance units, top-
up amount and the total top-up amount to-date. The total top-
up amount has the increment function whereby it increases as Fig. 6. DES JADE Remote Monitoring Agent
the user topped up. The DES JADE Agent will act as the main
container for all the active agents in the system environment, B. Implementation of Wireless Prepaid Meter using
whereby it has the feature of directory which announces JADE-LEAP
available agents (Directory Facilitator) and controls the agents The Smart Agent based Wireless Prepaid Meter is compiled
by creating and destroying the agents (Agent Management and run on Android Emulator, and login information is
System) as shown in Fig 6. required for user authentication. Once logged in, the Agent
Once the DES JADE Agent Management GUI as shown in based wireless prepaid meter can be connected to the DES
Fig.6 is started, the DES main page will also initiate. The DES main container by setting the energy meter IP to match with the
main page comprises of a table stating the meter number, IP address of the DES. Once this is set, the validation process
balance units and total top-up amount to-date. begins.

VI.  IMPLEMENTATION OF SMART AGENT IN WIRELESS Once the WAMP database and emulator are connected the
unit consumed, and balance units in the given period will be
PREPAID ENERGY METER USING JADE-LEAP
displayed on the main page. At the same time, it also
The function of the Wireless Prepaid Meter is to display the communicates with the user Android application and transfers
unit consumed and balance units. The units consumed data are the balance units. These values will be pushed to the main
extracted from the Energy simulator which generates energy container held by DES as shown in Fig.7. The refresh button
units based on the usage of appliances at home. The balance will grab energy consumption units of the current time from the
units are calculated inside the Wireless energy meter using the database as well as calculating the balance units.
given unit consumed by the energy simulator which will be
highlighted later in the next section. Login information are VIII. CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK
required to enter the Smart Agent based Wireless Prepaid The introduction of prepaid meter (PM) has solved many
energy Meter to ensure the connection to the JADE main issues for the utility provider and it also cuts down the hassle of
container and to provide minimal security to the energy meter. having to visit households to read meters, which can be a big
A. Operation of Smart Agent based Wireless Prepaid challenge. PM opens up many opportunities for further
Meter improvement. For example, providers do not have real time
information on how energy units are consumed, balance units
The three main functions are: for each household and how users spend on energy usage on a
• To generate units consumed from the wireless energy regular basis. And we proposed and developed a prototype
meter simulator and send the values to the DES agent Wireless Smart Power Meter using Agent technologies of the
and User Android application. JADE and JADE-LEAP running on Android Jelly Bean mobile
platform with Eclipse Juno IDE by creating three agents. We
• To calculate the balance units of each household. The
were able to demonstrate the capability of the services and the
balance units are calculated as:
intelligence of this multi-agent environment of the proposed

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