2019 4th International Conference on Information Systems and Computer Networks (ISCON)

GLA University, Mathura, UP, India. Nov 21-22, 2019

IoT based Online Power Consumption

Monitoring of a Distribution transformer feeding
Domestic/Commercial Consumer loads
Saji T Chacko Vikas Deshmukh
Head of Department Project Fellow
Electrical Engineering Department Electrical Engineering Department
UPU Govt Polytechnic College UPU Govt Polytechnic College
Durg, India Durg, India
chackosaji68@gmail.com vikasdew021@gmail.com

Abstract- In recent years the use of the internet for transformer and thereby carrying out the transformer
communication with one device to another device known as the preventive maintenance [3].
Internet of Things (IoT) is making its presence everywhere.
With IoT it is capable to communicate with system device and II. METHODOLOGY
to use the device data for controlling monitoring and The proposed work analyzes the terminal voltage and
protecting it. Here the paper presents design and development
current at the three phase load terminals fed from a three-
of online power consumption monitoring by loads from a
distribution transformer using IoT. Apart from this, the
phase transformer. The processed parameters by the
monitoring system detects faults in distribution transformer by controller in real time are communicated to the utility
verifying and maintaining records of the following parameter engineer regarding the power drawn, the current in each
of the transformer like the current drawn, input voltage phase and the operating power factor. The online power
available to the load transformer. The above parameters are consumption monitoring system consists of voltage and
sensed using sensors which are then preprocessed as per the current sensors, controller and communication medium [4,5].
controller analog input requirements. Accordingly, the For measuring the supply voltage to the load, the sensor used
controller processes the parameters as per the embedded is a three-phase step down transformer acting as potential
algorithm. The output from the controller is then sent to IoT transformer (PT) [6]. Similarly, for measuring the load
server for analyzing through user friendly GUI and graphs. current, three current transformers (CT), one for each phase
are used. The specification of the instrument transformers
Keywords- Distribution Transformer, Internet of Things, used is given in table 1 below. The sensed analog values are
ThingSpeak, Graphical User Interface, GSM Module then processed in the controller. For the study the
Development Board (At Mega controller) is used. The
I. INTRODUCTION processed output data from the controller is then sent to the
The 21st century will become autonomous and self- GSM module with built in SIM card slot acting as internet
controlled. In recent years the use of wireless technology like connectivity device between the controller and the web
Wi-Fi, GPRS and cloud networking are gaining immense server [7,8]. The online monitoring can then be assed from
popularity in applications like autonomous system. web browser of any Local Personnel computer (PC) / Mobile
Electricity plays a vital role in our daily life and therefore its or remotely from any handheld device connected to the
reliability in maintaining continuous power supply becomes internet by entering User ID and Password or web link
an important issue. In electrical power system the [9,10].The schematic diagram of the monitoring system is as
distribution transformers play a critical role in serving the shown in below inFigure 1 along with the brief description
commercial and domestic load requirements. However, of the hardwareused mainly the controller, communication
fluctuations in incoming line peak summer and winter cause module and web browser is given below.
sudden failure of distribution transformer. The other reason
for transformer failure is increase in oil temperature due to LED Indicator
sustained overload condition or due to poor cooling [1,2]. Things Speak
The poor cooling by transformer oil is mainly due to its To Server
increased viscosity or its insufficient volume level in
transformer tank due to leakage from transformer bushings
or from tank body. Therefore, it is very important to monitor
current, voltage, oil temperature rise, tank oil level so that
failure of distribution transformer can be avoided. The
analysis of data of all the parameters obtained using IoT
Communication
technology will help in understanding the loading pattern of Distribution Transformer CT & PT Microcontroller Medium
a transformer and check for reasons for transformer
overloading over a time period if any. The analysis will also
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the proposed online power consumption
help in identifying for any imminent fault to occur in
monitoring system

978-1-7281-3651-6/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE 441

 TABLE I. MAJOR ITEM DESCRIPTION AND SPECIFICATION device or application can communicate with ThingSpeak
S. Item Specification Quantit using a Restful API, and the data so obtained can be either
No. Description y used kept private, or public. ThingSpeak provides an online text
01 Three phase x Primary Voltage 440V (L-L) 01 editor to perform data analysis and visualization. Apart from
Transformer x Secondary Voltage 440 V(L-L) it can also perform actions such as running regularly
x Rating 10 KVA scheduled code or sending a tweet when the analyzed data
02 Three Phase x Input Voltage-440V 01 passes a defined threshold. The hardware setup and
Load x Capacity- 3 KW flowchart of the controller for online monitoring is shown in
Figure 2 and 3 respectively.
Three Phase x Input voltage- 440V (L-L) 01
03 Potential x Output voltage -12V (l-L)
Transformer x Burden- 250VA

04 Current x Primary Current - 20A 03

Transformer x Secondary Current – 1A
x Burden- 20VA

III. HARDWARE DESCRIPTIONS

A. Controller
The controller used is Arduino board [11]. Arduino is an
open source 8-bit AVR based microcontroller development
board. It can read both digital and analog inputs like inputs
from sensors, switches or a text message; process it
according to the user algorithm for the desired output. For
this the Arduino algorithm and instruction known as Fig. 2. Hardware set up of the proposed online power monitoring system
programming and Arduino Software (IDE) is used. The
salient features of Arduino board are
ƒ Microcontroller: ATmega328 (AVR)
ƒ Operating Voltage of controller: 5V
ƒ Input Voltage: 6-20V (recommended:7-12V)
ƒ Digital I/O Pins: 14 (D0-D13)
ƒ PWM output: 6 (D3, D5, D6, D9, D10, D11)
ƒ Analog Input Pins: 6(A0-A5)
ƒ DC Current per I/O Pin: 40 mA-50mA
ƒ Memory: 32KB flash Memory, 2KB SRAM, 1KB
EEPROM
ƒ Crystal Oscillator: 16 MHz

B. GSM (Global System for Mobile) Module

The GSM module work as heart of this project and is
used to make connection with the web server. The data
output generated by the controller is communicated by GSM
to the web server using AT commands It is also used to
receive data from web server [12]. The specifications of the
GSM module are as noted.
ƒ Power requirement 12 V
ƒ Configurable baud rate from 9600-115200 bps
through various AT (Attention) commands.
ƒ Interfaces with a microcontroller using pins
Receiver (Rx) and Transmitter (Tx) as USART or
DB9 Connector (Serial Port).

C. Web Server Fig. 3. Flow chart of the control algorithm

ThingSpeak is an open source Internet of Things
application and API to store and retrieve data from things IV. RESULTS
using the HTTP protocol over the internet or via Local area The online condition monitoring system for distribution
network [13,14]. ThingSpeak enables the creation of sensor transformer was designed, implemented and tested
logging application, location tracking application and a usinghardware set up as discussed. The load used is a three-
social network of things with status update. ThingSpeak was phase resistive load of 3 KW. The ATmega controller read
originally launched by ioBridge in 2010 as a service in the status of the input parameters mainly the current and
support of IoT applications in an open data platform. Any voltage of eachphase. For this the output of the instrument

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transformer i.e. the potential and current transformer must
meet the requirements of the Arduino ADC signal input.

Fig. 6(a).Per phase voltage R phase

Fig. 4. Signal conditioning circuit for PT

The requirement for the controller analog input is a positive

voltage between 0 Volt and the ADC reference voltage,
usually 5Volt. To achieve this a signal conditioning unit is
used. The signal condition circuit convert the output of the
instrument transformer i.e. the PT and the CT to a
waveform that has a positive peak that is less than 5 volt
and negative peak that is less than 0 volt. Fig.6(b). Line currentR phase

Fig.6(c). Per phasepower consumedR phase

Fig. 5. Signal conditioning circuit for CT

In order to full fill the ADC requirement the signal value

has to be scaled down and an offset to be added so that no
negative polarity signal component is present. The waveform
can be scaled down using a voltage divider circuit connected
across the potential transformer terminals, and the offset
(bias) can be added using a voltage source created by another
voltage divider circuit connected across the controller power
supply as shown in Figure 4. Similarly, it can be obtained for
current transformer with suitable burden resistance as shown
in Figure5.

Fig.6(d).Per phase load power factor R phase

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 The controller ADC pins read positive value inputs of
voltage and current. The developed algorithm samples the
inputs and checks for the peak value of the inputs. Once the
peak value is detected the program starts reading the raw
value of current and voltage signal coming through analog
pins of controller. A digital low pass filter is used to extract
the 2.5 Volt DC offsets value. The offset value is then
subtracted from the sampled input signal. The obtained
value is then added with the above offset value so that the
new offset value is centered on 0 counts. The new offset
value is then sampled from the sampled voltage and current
input to obtain the final voltage and current values. The final
voltage and current values are then used to obtain thereal
power and the load power factor. The developed algorithm
uses thefollowinginitialization values namely the zero Fig. 7(d). Per phase load power factor Y phase
crossings, timeout and the voltage and current calibration
constants. The number of crossings i.e. the number of half The measurements of power and power factor for the
wavelengths and timeout shows the sample numbers and is other two phases are also done in a similar way. The
an indication of the accuracy in reading the input parameters. processed data in the controller communicate with GSM
For the work the value of crossings and timeout chosen are module by using various AT commands to upload the data in
20 and 2000. Similarly, the gain constants for the voltage are ThingSpeak server. The data which is going to upload in
taken as 315.816 and for the currents 19-21 for the three server is usually JSON type. JSON or JavaScript object
phases respectively. notation is a lightweight protocol for the data interchange
format. The protocol which is in text format enables the
system processors for faster generation and analyzing. It also
incorporates features of standard programming languages.

Fig. 7(a). Per Phase Voltage Y phase

Fig.8(a). Total Power Consumed by the three-phase load

Fig.7(b). Line Current Y Phase

Fig.8(b). Load Average Power Factor

Fig.8(b

The assessment and analysis of data regarding the

Th
electrical parameters can be achieved at the ThingSpeak
electr
server
erve graph by providing the required visual effect as per
the need of the utility engineer of that area. Figure 6 and 7
shows the real time monitoring of parameters of phase R and
Y using ThingSpeak. The monitoring method is user-
friendly, and it continuously monitors all the three-phase
Fig.7(c). Per phase Power consumed, Y phase supply parameter. Fig 8 shows the total power consumed and

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the average power factor of the three-phase load. The Distribution transformer feeding both three phase and
measured parameters can be also displayed in the mobile single phase domestic and commercial loads
phone of the Engineer who oversees the utility power
distribution of that area. The caption of the displayed REFERENCES
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