Detection of Electricity Theft in the Distribution System using Arduino and GSM

Abstract

Currently energy theft has become a major problem in the developing countries like India, Pakistan, Srilanka, etc. The economic status of the country will be disturbed in a great manner if the electricity is illegally used. It is very difficult to verify theft occurred and solve it at individual level in the real time applications. Various kinds of energy theft comprised of meter tampering, bypassing the energy meter, direct hooking from line, etc. This paper proposes the detection of energy theft using Arduino and GSM module. LCD is provided to display the data of power usage and also the power being theft i.e., the difference between the consumers load and the theft load which is sent to the GSM module. Further this information is sent to the electricity board and also to the consumer as a message which embodies the distribution transformer details. The power is fed from the transformer to the Arduino which is being stepped down. The major advantage of this paper is when compared to the existing system, it detects the power theft and sends the information of the corresponding feeder using GSM module to electricity board directly without manually filing a complaint and also in case of power failure, the message is sent without any interruption as Arduino is facilitated with power backup.