Smart Demand Controller/ Smart load dispatcher

日期 : Jan 2016 - Dec 2016

The objective of our final year project was to measure and monitor different electrical parameters such as Active Power (KW), Apparent Power (KVAR), Reactive Power (KVA), Power Factor and design a smart demand controller which can automatically take decisions of switching ON or OFF the incoming supply with respect to a predefined allowable level of loading. This would be done by defining different priorities among the load being controlled. Arduino was used as a micro-controller for this project. Furthermore power factor would also be improved automatically using capacitor banks. As this is a power based project, so the initial task was to measure the two main electrical parameters voltage and current which is known as “Data Acquisition”. We cannot give voltage and current signals directly to arduino because arduino can only accept analog input upto 5 volts. So we needed our main paramaters i.e. current and voltage levels which arduino can further process. For voltage, we used combination of transformer and voltage divider circuit. For current we used ACS 712 module.. Arduino can only sense voltage signals. ACS712 converts the current signal into voltage signal using Hall Effect and steps it down so we can directly give its output to arduino. After acquiring these parameters we programmed the arduino to calculate Active power(KW), Reactive Power(KVAr), Apparent Power(KVA) and Power Factor(p.f), and displayed these quantities on an LED screen. After accumulating the main parameters our next target was to control the load. For dispatching the loads we needed circuit breakers/relays so we have used an arduino based relay module. This module automatically switches ON and OFF the loads according to the priorities (based on Active power) which have been programmed in the arduino. For the purpose of P.F improvement, we have used capacitor banks in conjunction with relay modules to add those capacitor banks in the circuit whenever P.F decreases the defined value.