DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF SMART BILLING AND AUTOMATED METER READING SYSTEM FOR UTILITY GAS

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF SMART BILLING AND AUTOMATED METER READING SYSTEM FOR UTILITY GAS

Abstract

Billing automation systems for public utilities (e.g. electricity, gas and water) have been widely studied and implemented in developed countries across the world. But in Pakistan, this technology is still on its way to be implemented for domestic as well as for industrial consumers. This smart billing and automated meter reading system for utility gas explores the design, implementation and application of billing automation system for gas consumers in Nigeria. For low gas consumption (domestic consumers), a prepaid meter has been designed which needs a prepaid card to keep the gas supply continue. Similarly for high gas consumption (industrial consumers), the gas meter is wirelessly connected with the regional billing office. In this way the billing office is able to directly communicate with the meter and records its gas consumption reading. Along with the gas, this system can easily be enhanced to measure the consumption of electricity and water.

Background of the study

The Automated Meter Reading (AMR) was started in 1962 by AT&T, but this experiment was not successful. The modern era of AMR started in 1985; since then different techniques have been utilized to get better reliability and performance [9]. Therefore currently in developed countries, many successful AMR systems are being used to facilitate the consumers of water, gas or electricity. However in Pakistan, service provider companies (e.g. WAPDA, SNGPL, WASA, etc) are still using analogue meters and manual billing systems. Such type of billing method is being used both for domestic consumers as well as for industrial consumers. Basically using this system the bill is calculated in three steps. Firstly meter readers (human being) go home to home to manually record the meter reading. Secondly all readings are sent to regional billing office where data entry operator, enters the meter readings in a computer to calculate the bills. Thirdly at the end, the bills (in paper form) are sent home to home (to gas consumers). The above stated process is manual and prone to defects and ultimately the consumers mentally and financially suffer in such billing system. Therefore to replace the manual and traditional billing techniques in Pakistan, we designed and implemented a cost effective, but still reliable, billing automation system for gas provider companies. As already discussed that analogue meters are already being used in Nigeria therefore in our system we modified an analogue meter and converted it into a digital gas meter. In this way the gas provider companies would not have to completely replace their existing setup facilities and they would be able to replace their existing billing methods with our automated system.

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF SMART BILLING AND AUTOMATED METER READING SYSTEM FOR UTILITY GAS

Chapters: 1 - 5
Delivery: Email

Number of Pages: 68

Price: 3000 NGN

In Stock

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