Trio of SSM engineering students design smart electric meter

Kashmir despite known for having huge potential for generating hydroelectricity reels under power crisis on daily basis.

The miss management of power coupled with the usage of old school technologies has taken a toll on locals who sometime pay more than what they consume and vice versa.

A big portion of the power crisis in Kashmir is said due to unchecked transmission and distribution losses.

However, three young female engineers – Shaista Hassan Mir, Sahreen Ashruf and Sameena Hassan – have innovated a device which may change the way electricity is consumed and the way old analogue metering system is used  that has been time and again installed with little or no success.     

In order to change the way electricity consumption is measured, these female engineering trio from CSC department in SSM college have build ‘Smart Electric Metering System’ which they said is latest in terms of features and technology. They say that they have moved a step further and made a better product which can be introduced by the government in near future and will change the way the state consumes electricity and pays for it.

They said through their invention they have taken the concept of electric metering into smartphones of the consumers which can be handled via an android application which they have developed for the smart metering system.

From paying for electricity to any other bank transaction, this generation is more into doing their work through smartphone, so through our smart meter we have kept that in mind while developing our product, says the trio.

Currently in Kashmir the electric meters installed are mostly analogue, although the PDD is planning to install new meters as the talk of prepaid electric system is catching up. These girls say that through their invention they have developed a smart system that has features putting it ahead of the planed technology.   

“Our Smart electric meter is the advanced Version of the currently available smart meters in terms of features and technology, which saves money, labour and time of both consumer and the power department,” said Shaheen Hassan, one of the engineering graduates.

“If our invention will be put into use, you won’t see linemen up in your houses taking reading manually, everything will be done in a smart way,” she said, adding “Besides this, our meter is economic which has been designed on the basis of already available analogue meters and our project is in digital mode with number of additional features like GSM with IoT technology,” she said.

They said there is no human involvement in the entire process which zeros the chance of manual errors and on the top their meter has a well established anti-theft mechanism in place which will save from power theft.

“Our meter is enabled with anti-theft mechanism; any theft in the power consumption would be monitored through the App or website. Our system sends warning on the low balance to the customers and then automatically cuts the power supply off thus eradicating the concept of labour for line cutting which was very complex, the same procedure involved on line reconnection,” said Sahreen Ashruf, another team member.

The enthusiastic engineering students said that their system provides data communication between digital energy meters and web Server gateway which helps to monitor the energy management system. They said this has been done in order to put the costumer in control and at the same time give the service provider an easy way to monitor his service.

 “After seeing the overwhelming response to our idea by our department we approached PDD who appreciated our work and provided further inputs for the project to carry it on in a better way,” said Shaista Hassan Mir third group member.

In a short span of time, these young engineers have inculcated many top-notch feature in their smart metering system that include tariff based metering, monthly bill and tariff range messaging using GSM, pre paid system of payment, Wi-Fi integration, app and website-based data visualization on cloud.

The trio claims that their product is very economic and if introduced on large scale the cost will be much lower.

“We have made sure that a consumer in Kashmir pay only what he consumes, most of people are outside the state for months but still have to pay bills, on adopting our system this thing won’t happen and the consumers will pay only for the units he consumes,” said Sameena Hassan.    

These young engineering students say that the support of family, teachers, friends and the will to contribute to society kept them going despite many huddles.

“During the course of our project work, we were de-motivated at many stages as the society we live in have elements who judge you based on your gender rather than on your capability, many ridiculed the idea but we kept going,” she said. “We are thankful to the department of computer engineering of SSM College and our project and project co-coordinator who guided us at every step.”

These young girls are paving the way to the smart consumption of electricity and are also encouraging many youngsters to help built latest technologies which will benefit society in context of saving energy for a brighter future.  

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