EE Senior Design 2007-2008

Team BPSK is developing a home energy monitoring system that allows the residential consumer to accurately track and understand his or her monthly energy consumption and its related costs. Routine daily decisions, like the flick of the light switch or a few degrees increase in the water heater temperature, can seem insignificant at the time, but over the course of a month, these choices can have a large impact on the total cost of electricity. Currently, consumers only see their total energy usage on a monthly scale, so it is virtually impossible to conceive of how individual appliances contribute to the overall bill. Allowing the consumer to make well-informed decisions requires real-time energy and pricing information, as well as more specific feedback on individual electric devices.

Basic Requirements

The Meter Maid system should:

Measure total power consumption of the living unit

Measure power consumption of individual household appliances

Report power consumption in real time

Obtain accurate pricing information

Compute a projected electric bill

Compute time-of-day energy usage statistics

Record and display all of the above information to the consumer

The Meter Maid

We envision a system based around a centralized main unit that could be located near the thermostat in a home. The main unit will wirelessly gather data from two types of auxiliary nodes. The first will be attached to the utility box and measure the total power being used in the home. The other type of node will measure the power used by an individual appliance.