Powera, AC line properties acquisition with mesh lora communication and flexible transient state protection

Abstract

From big industries and factories to houses and residences, the entire modern civiliza- tion relies on electricity to operate and prosper. With several effective methods of generating electrical energy, measuring and tracing that energy is more than a simple counter concept, with existing human interaction dependent meters, errors, data tampering and mishandling are as common as faulty uncalibrated meters. These exact problems, snowball by time into either taxes on the consumer's end, in- flating the bills to triple and even quadruple their usual one, or considerable profit loss to the supplying company. this resulted in the necessity of providing a pre-calibrated, accurate, and human interaction independent device.

Adding to the whole system measurement problems, the communication of data and the infrastructure needed is a crucial point to be altered as wires, wireless tours, and satellites all inflate the cost of electrical energy being distributed, that is why LoRa technologies became a go-to response to all wireless long-range uses and cases where mesh custom protocol was developed since electricity can be imperceptible in many cases.All the problems raised above can be solved and implemented into an advanced me- tering infrastructure, with the idea of power measurement and LoRa communication in mind, PoweRa was implemented using the embedded Analog Front End Integrated Circuit, thus providing highly accurate and precise measurements for all AC line prop- erties, LoRa mesh-like protocol which increases in range with each peer being installed as data will bounce from node to node in a short path algorithm covering a perimeter of at least 15KM. The PoweRa system is complemented by a safe and maintenance-free package, heavy- duty solid state relays were used to trigger the line protection responding to a transient state overvoltage/overcurrent triggering prediction algorithm.Keywords: Energy metering, Mesh Long Range communication, energy metering, protection.