Energy Monitoring &

Managing System

Matthew Wilkinson and Wesley Ashton

Introduction

In 2007, Serving in Mission (SIM) asked the Collaboratory

to develop a device to measure, display, and regulate the ener-

gy consumption of individual buildings in order to help edu-

cate community members about conscientious energy use and

protect the solar generation system from damage due to over-

loading.

In 2009 the Energy Monitoring & Management System

(EMMS) project began with the goal of producing such a de-

vice, and delivered the first proto-type to Mahadaga in January

2012. Many difficulties arose with the original design, and

since then it was decided that a complete redesign of the meter

was required. In Spring 2013, the EMMS team began working

on a new version of the meter that uses a more flexible, inex-

pensive platform. The team produced a new prototype meter

and delivered five meters to Mahadaga during Summer 2014.

In Fall 2014, the project obtained a new client, the Theo-

logical College of Zimbabwe (TCZ), who requested 20 meters

to be delivered in Summer 2015. The design for the TCZ

boards has been modified slightly. However, most of the im-

provements are code-based. The team also made substantial

improvements for the updated Burkina Faso meter. Unfortu-

nately due to complications with the client, Matt Walsh, the

team will be unable to deliver an updated meter until 2016.

Clients

Our primary client is Matt Walsh, a missionary serving

with SIM in Mahadaga, Burkina Faso. Our secondary client is

the Theological College of Zimbabwe (TCZ), an evangelical

college that educates tomorrow’s Christian leaders in the

Church and society.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Randall Fish, Tony Beers, John Meyers, and Paul Myers for their tech-

nical contributions and support for this project. We would also like to thank Tom Austin, project advi-

sor, for his continuing support. We would like to thank our other team members: Daniel Baker, Seth

Barr, Nathan Chaney, Ashley Evans, Aaron Gettemy, Austin Kratz, Tommy Martin, Nathan Millary, Ka-

rine Moussa, Zachary Sorrell, Greg Talamo, and Paul Tajiri.

Meter Components Two Box Design:

The meter as a whole is made up of two separate boxes; a power box and a display box.

The power box can work independently of the display box, but the display box is reliant on

the power box. These boxes communicate via serial connection. The display box provides a

user-friendly interface to view and allocate power usage.

Further Information

Visit our wiki page at http://www.thecollaboratoryonline.org/wiki/kwhr for more infor-

mation.

Design Highlights Since last year, there have been some design changes implemented to the meter. The team has been

working on software improvements as well as circuit redesign. Most of the changes were made to the

Burkina Faso meter in order to allow for future expandability and more reliable operation. These chang-

es include a new PIC, improved transceiver, new PCB layout, a battery, and a real time clock and calen-

dar (RTCC). The new PIC has more pins which allows for future expandability and more options to be

added to the meter in the future.

EMMS has continued using a 3D printer for the enclosures, but with recent technical struggles the

project has been looking into outsourcing these enclosures.

The project also started outsourcing all of the boards in the meter. With the demand of 20 boards

needed for TCZ, the time and quality of the boards that were produced on the in-house milling machine

were below satisfactory. The chosen PCB prototyping company is Dirty PCB. This company provides

the meter with quality boards at a competitive cost. The turnaround time for the orders to come from

this company are reasonable compared to milling the boards in-house.

.

Current Status and Next Steps

The EMMS project has produced and installed a meter that has proven to be reliable at monitoring

and regulating power. This design presents an effective and affordable solution to the issues in Burkina

Faso as well as in Zimbabwe. Moving forward we hope to continue implementing additional features

and focus on turning the EMMS project into a sustainable business.

Power measurement and

control

Power Control Box

Information display and

configuration menus

User Interface

AC Power In Switched

Power to

Building

Serial Communication

Link

Power Box:

The Power Supply Board is responsible for

taking in the AC voltage and producing 12V

DC as well as passing through the AC volt-

age. These voltages are fed to the command board.

The Command Board contains the PIC as well as the

LED bar graph for displaying power usage. It also con-

tains the port for communication with the display box.

The Current Sense Board mounts on the command

board and measures current using the magnetic field

surrounding the wire. This current and the AC voltage

let through by the power supply board are then used in

order to calculate the power usage.

Display Box:

The Display Board contains a LCD display for the user.

The Button Board is the last board and is responsible for

allowing navigation of the menu on the LCD display.

The User Interface Board is the largest board in the box

and connects the two other boards in the box.