A Real-Time Low-Cost Energy Data Acquisition and Monitoring System for Household Appliances

Energy consumption trends particulary for residental buildings have a significant share in terms of energy consumption. In the determination of consumption trends, it is crucial for instant and accurate measurement of the consumed energy by the electrical appliances in the residentals. This paper presents a low-cost, flexible, scalable and secure system for real-time analysis of key electrical parameters including RMS voltage and current, active, reactive, apparent power and cumulative energy consumption. The proposed system comprises multiple distributed sensor nodes and a central coordinator unit responsible for aggregating data from all active sensor nodes. In addition to other electronic circuits, all sensor nodes are equipped with an ESP8266 microcontroller and a PZEM-004T v3.0 energy sensor, while the coordinator node is equipped with the same controller and MicroSD card module. Internal communication between the sensor nodes and the central coordinator node is established via nRF24L01 radio frequency (RF) modules, whereas external connectivity of the system is maintained through Wi-Fi. User friendly interface. While real-time monitoring and data analysis can be performed through a user-friendly web-based interface, the data stored on the MicroSD card can be further evaluated using statistical software. In order to evaluate accuracy, The measurements from the designed energy metering device has been compared against those from the HIOKI 3334 AC/DC Power HiTester, known for its high sensitivity and precision after the network system was established. Then, the energy consumed by home appliances was measured by the designed system. As a result of power measurements, mean absolute percentage error was found as 1.71%. The most important advantage of the proposed system is the flexibility, portability, sensitivity under different loads, and the ability to display and record data without the need of a computer.