SMS- based Recharge Protocol for Prepaid Energy Billing System

Abstract – A prepaid energy metering system enables power utilities to collect energy bills from the consumers’ prior to the usage of power by delivering only as much as what has been paid for. In Nigeria, the current prepaid meters use the keypad technology or smart card for their energy re-loading or recharging. This poses some challenges because the consumers have to travel a long distance to the utility company, waste a lot of time and energy before getting his/her energy meter activated when out of energy credit. In this paper, an SMS-recharge system for prepaid meter is proposed whereby consumers at the comfort of their homes, without stress or waste of energy or time, can recharge/activate their meters via SMS without the use of keypad by sending a 12-digit Pin number via SMS to the utility company. The aim of this paper is to model an intelligent billing system and develop an SMS protocol for the recharge scheme. This work contains the methodology and developed SMS protocol-link between the GSM modem (M20) and the Microcontroller (PIC 18F2550) for this process .The entire billing process is designed and simulated in Matlab/Simulink environments. Results obtained are very satisfactory. When fully implemented in Nigeria, revenue generation in the power sector will greatly increase as more sales of energy vouchers will be made.