Development of Electric Power Availability Recorder for Accurate Energy Billing of Unmetered Facilities

Abstract

The design, fabrication and testing of a power availability recorder (PAR) to track the duration of electricity supply in facilities is presented. The design was executed with C Language encoded in a microcontroller which served as the central processing unit of the device. Proteus software was, subsequently, used to simulate the real-life practicability of the device before the prototype was constructed. This device is designed to record power availability in seconds which can be converted to hours while energy consumption is recorded in kWh. Thereafter, the device was functionally tested and installed in a customers' premises for a period of three (3) months. Energy Consumed was plotted against Availability using GraphPad Prism Software and it could be seen that Availability and Energy Consumption are directly proportional to each other. This forms a sound basis for discrediting the outrageous bills issued by the utility companies for months when there were few hours or no power availability. It follows therefore that if installed in unmetered households, this device could go a long way in curbing the excesses and checking the inefficiency of the utility companies in terms of unjustifiable estimated bills issued to their customers