Design and implementation of a RFID-based power meter and outage recording system

Radio frequency identification (RFID) system is looked upon as one of the top ten important technologies in the 20^th century. In the upcoming years, the public area applications are the key issue in developing RFID. Power system is innately bulky, wide-spreading, and is, definitely, an extremely important application area of RFID. In the power area, the RFID can be implemented on apparatus management, procedure control, power consumption management and personnel access control. Additionally, RFID can be applied extensively to customers. By integrating RFID into a power meter and outage recorder, the power consumption data and power reliability information of customers can be fully collected and recorded. This paper tries to design and implement a RFID-based power meter and outage recording system. The microcontroller of Microchip dsPIC30F series is used to develop a small-scale power meter and outage recorder. The proposed RFID system is then embedded into the power meter and records the power data in tag. Due to the uniqueness of RFID tag, the power consumption data and outage information of customers can all be recorded and then be identified in the rear-end processing system. Experimental results show the validity of the proposed system.