International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System

IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 7, Issue 3
March 2018

GSM Based Electricity Theft Detection using Arduino

L.Hinduja, M.Nivedha , B.Priyavadhana

3rd year student
Department of ECE, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore
Dr .B.Premalatha
Assistant professor,
Department of ECE, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore

ABSTRACT proposed abstract is an electricity theft detection

Every year there is increasing number of electricity thefts
across domestic electricity connection as well as
industrial electricity supply. If the electricity is illegally
used it will affect the economic status of the country. The
planning for distribution and production of electrical
energy may be difficult in case of unrecorded energy
usage. The project’s aim is to design a system which is
used to detect and eliminate the power theft in
transmission lines using current sensor and GSM
module. There is a problem with the rural areas where
the wired system is difficult to transfer the information
on electricity theft to the supplier. A wireless technique,
GSM has high efficiency and larger range of
communication compared to Bluetooth, infrared etc. that
are with the limitations of range and less efficiency. In
this project Arduino is used to detect power theft and to
send the command to GSM module to send the theft
information message in this project. The implementation
of this system will save large amount of electricity.
KEYWORDS: GSM, Current Sensor, Arduino Mega
2560.
1. INTRODUCTION
The most common problem in our country is
electrical power theft. The population in our
country is very high and the power theft is also
increasing day by day. Every year we are facing
number of domestic electricity thefts and power
thefts in industrial supply, that results in loss of
distributed power to the supplier and because of
which we are facing the continuous problems like
power cut in urban and rural areas. This project
helps to avoid the problems in satisfying the need of
electricity for whole country. There are numerous
ways using which electricity theft can be done, so it
is difficult to track how a theft has occurred, and
this issue has to be solved as early as possible. Our
system which is used to detect the theft
automatically that is made by the most irregular
way of bypassing the transmission line with a piece
a wire. In this system a current sensor is used which
is used to sense the total amount of current
consumed by the load. If any tapping has done in
the line during transmission, more current will be
drawn by the sensor, which indicates that electricity
theft has been occurred. The theft information is
then quickly accessed by the Arduino mega and a
SMS will be send to the mobile through the GSM
technology.
2. EXISTING SYSTEM
The existing wireless communication system of
energy meter has been done using ZIGBEE, relay
control and GPRS. This method is mainly used to
secure the communication channel and ZIGBEE for
the transmission of data in a serial process. The
drawback of this system is that the meter readings
can be collected only by going to the particular
range of area and cut power supply manually if
needed.
3. PROPOSED SYSTEM
In this proposed system GSM technology is
implemented for transmitting the information about
power theft to the supplier. The system is designed
in such a way to prevent the electricity thefts
happening in the current scenario. This system is
being interfaced with Arduino and sensors which
are used to sense the problem, if any problem is
detected then the message will be sent to the user
via GSM. This will prevent the electricity theft as
much as possible. The proposed system gives

472 L.Hinduja, M.Nivedha , B.Priyavadhana, Dr .B.Premalatha

 International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System
solution for the existing problems like power theft,
wastage of energy and transmission line fault that
are faced by the authorized power suppliers.
4. BLOCK DIAGRAM DESCRIPTION
4.1 ARDUINO MEGA
Arduino mega is a microcontroller in which we can
program to do a particular task at any instant of
time for our convenience. It contains ATmega2560
which is a microcontroller. It is available at
virtually low cost and it is highly reliable. The
software used to program the Arduino to do a
specific task is Arduino IDE(Integrated
Development Environment). Arduino mega has
more digital I/O pins compared to Arduino Uno. It
is advanced and has 54 I/O pins.
4.2 BLOCK DIAGRAM
Fig.4.2.1 Block diagram
4.3 POWER SUPPLY
The input to the circuit is applied from the regulated
power supply. The 230 V AC input from the main
supply is step downed by the transformer to 12V
AC and is fed to a rectifier. The rectifier output
which is a pulsating DC voltage is then fed to a
filter to remove the AC components to get a pure
DC voltage. The obtained filter output is fed to a
voltage regulator, output obtained is a constant dc
voltage depending on the specification of the
voltage regulator. The output DC voltage from 7805
voltage regulator is given to the arduino mega, relay
473 L.Hinduja, M.Nivedha , B.Priyavadhana, Dr .B.Premalatha
IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 7, Issue 3
March 2018
and current sensor and the output DC voltage from
7812 voltage regulator is given to the GSM module
to power it.
4.4 GSM MODEM &MAX232 IC
GSM is Global System for Mobile Communication.
It uses digital wireless techniques like TDMA and
CDMA. GSM Modem-Max 232 has an inbuilt dual
band GSM engine-SIM 800A. It can carry about 64
kbps to 120 Mbps of data rates. GSM also provides
advanced voice and data services. It has both
transmitting and receiving pins which are used to
send and receive messages.
4.5 CURRENT SENSOR ACS712
The current sensor ACS712 senses the current from
ac supply and transfers the reading to Arduino
board. It operates from the range of 5V and gives an
analog voltage as output which is proportional to
the current sensed on the terminals. The
applications of ACS712 current include motor
control, detection of load, switch mode supplies and
over current fault protection and management.
Fig.4.5.1 Interfacing of Arduino and current
sensor
4.6 RELAY MODULE
Relay acts like a switch and it is used to control the
high power devices. As the operating voltage of
Arduino is 5v it can’t control higher voltage devices
directly, so a 5v relay can be used to switch the
230v current and then arduino is used to control the
relay. The relay work by controlling one electrical
 International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System
IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 7, Issue 3
March 2018

circuit by switching contact in another circuit either

electrically or mechanically. A relay is said to be in
open contact when it is normally open (NO) i.e. NC
pin connected to COM and connected when INT1 is
set high and thereby relay is not energized. A relay
contact is a closed contact when it is normally
closed (NC) i.e. disconnected when INT1 is high,
and hence there will be no supply to relay.

5. FLOW CHART:

Fig.6.1 System is ON

Fig.5.1 Flow chart

6. HARDWARE DESIGN:
The 230V AC power supply is given to one pin of
current sensor, the other pin of current sensor is
connected to the load through the relay. The input
of 5V for arduino is given by rectifier circuit and a
voltage regulator LM7805 from the 230V
supply.The analog output pin of current sensor is
given to arduino through A0.The VCC and GND of
current sensor and relay are connected to arduino.
The interfacing of GSM and arduino is made. The
input 12V GSM is given through rectifier circuit
and voltage regulator LM7812. The corresponding
message is send through GSM
Fig.6.2 Power theft is detected
7.CONCLUSION
A Wireless Electricity Theft Detection and
monitoring system has been designed and
developed with proper integration of both the
hardware and the software. Without any human
interface this system provides an effective and easy
way to detect electrical theft. The use of GSM
helps in achieving the numerous advantages of
wireless network systems. Power theft is actually
bypassing the energy meter but in our project we
have indicated the theft by increasing the load and
this method is cost efficient.

474 L.Hinduja, M.Nivedha , B.Priyavadhana, Dr .B.Premalatha

 International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System
IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 7, Issue 3
March 2018

8. REFERENCES cost electronic prepaid energy meter, IOSR Journal

[1]G.L. Prashanthi, K .V . Prasad 2016, Wireless power
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[2] J.L. Parra and E.A.S. Calderon 2013, Use of shunts
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research in science , engineering and technology, pp.
1–4.
[3] S.K.A. Zaidi, H. Mansoor, S.R. Ashraf, and A.
Hassan 2014, Design and implementation of low
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[4] Pradeep Mittall 2015, Wireless Electricity billing
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Engineering and Technology (IRJET) Volume:
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[5] M.Jamil, F.Munir, A.A.Khan, and A.Mirza 2014,
Telemetering & billing system for spatially
distributed electrical power clients, Electrical power
system research pp. 35–40.

475 L.Hinduja, M.Nivedha , B.Priyavadhana, Dr .B.Premalatha