Design and development of RFID based Multi-User Smart Energy Distribution System at Sunyani Technical University, Ghana

Abstract

In Ghana families living in large and compound houses desire to have separate energy meters from other occupants. This is because individuals cannot monitor and control the energy consumption of other tenants and results in misunderstanding in energy bill sharing, overcrowding of energy meters on the wall of a building and likelihood of fire outbreak. It is therefore expedient to have a very accurate, efficient and peaceful means of delivering electrical energy to multiple users within a household with just a single energy meter and this has necessitated the introduction of Smart Multi-user Energy Distribution Meter (SEDS). In this paper microcontroller based smart electrical distribution switch that has the capability of allocating independent energy units to several users in a household is proposed. Experiment was done by assigning Energy units of 4kWh, 8kWh and 6kWh to three logging points on the SEDS device representing three different users. A load of 100W was connected representing the consumption of individual user. The results indicate that the rate of consumption is dependent on the total load connected. The SEDS device has different switches allocated to each user which monitor the consumption rate of the user and automatically isolate a user when power gets exhausted which serve the same purpose as several users having different energy meters. However, individual consumption can be monitored and controlled by the user.