Energy and Power Engineering, 2013, 5, 1357-1361
doi:10.4236/epe.2013.54B257 Published Online July 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/epe)
Design of Real-time Electricity Prices and Wireless
Communication Smart Meter
Hongling Xie, Ping Huang, Yanqing Li, Liang Zhao, Feilong Wang
Hebei Provincial Key Laboratory of Power Transmission Equipment Security Defense,
North China Electric Power University, Baoding, China
Received 2013
ABSTRACT
Under the background of smart grid’s real-time electricity prices theory, a real-time electricity prices and wireless
communication smart meter was designed. The metering chip collects power consumption information. The real-time
clock chip records current time. The communication between smart meter and system master station is achieved by the
wireless communication module. The “freescale” micro controller unit displays power consumption information on
screen. And the meter feedbacks the power consumption information to the system master station with time-scale and
real-time electricity prices. It results that the information exchange between users and suppers can be realized by the
smart meter. It fully reflects the demanding for communication of smart grid.
Keywords: Real-time Electricity Prices; Wireless Communication; Smart Meter; Freescale
1. Introduction
The idealized load requirements play a significant role in
energy saving and low-carbon economy. The smart elec-
tricity’s guiding ideology is using the informatization
means, price leverage and interactive strategies to mobi-
lize the power users to participate in demand-side’s re-
sponse and idealize the load requirements [1,2]. An im-
portant process in the China's smart grid development is
real time pricing release [3-6]. So the smart grid requires
advanced metering system to achieve real-time interac-
tive communications [7-9]. Against this background and
according to the literature [10], this paper design a smart
meter based on the wireless two-way communication to
achieve real-time electricity prices.
The smart meter is defined in “Functional specification
for smart Watt-hour meter” as “An energy meter can
display, storage and output data, be made up of measur-
ing unit and data processing unit, not only can measure
active and reactive electric energy, but also has two or
more functions like time-sharing and measure the re-
quired amount (average power within a specified time)”.
In this paper, the design of smart meters has the follow-
ing features:
a) Calculates the active and reactive electric energy,
analysis capabilities of the fundamental active power,
fundamental reactive power, harmonic active power and
harmonic reactive power, input via the keyboard and
displayed on the display.
b) Information will store in the MCU (micro controller
unit) to record the us er's power utility information at any
time.
c) Perform wireless communication with the system
master station to upload users’ power consumption in-
formation, and receive real time price information and
command issued by system master station[11].
d) Interrupted by the real-time clock chip, summarize
the user's power consumption information and cost each
month
2. Hardware Design
2.1. Hardware Structure
This paper will take 0.38 KV low voltage three-phase
four-wire grid system as example. The system hardware
structure is shown in Figure 1.
Systems and smart meters are isolated by voltage
transformer and current transformer. Energy metering
chip (ATT7022B) collects date and communicates with
MCU (Freescale MCS12DG128) by SPI bus. MCU get
the real-time from the real-time chip (RX-8025SA) by
I2C bus and store the date collected by Energy metering
chip in the MCU Flash E2PROM. Flash E2PROM’s ca-
pacity is 256 K byte and it meets the information stor-
age’s requirements. Then these data will sent to the sys-
tem master station by RS-232 serial port via a wireless
module (model for XL05-232AP2). And it will also ac-
cept the command issued by system master station. Users

H. L. Xie ET AL.
1358
can query the current electricity prices, costs and other
information through the keyboard, and displayed on the
screen.
2.2. Configuration Diagram of Each Module
1) Energy metering module
Energy metering chip select ATT7022B. It is a high
precision, strong function, multi-functional, an-
ti-tampering energy metering chip. It’s applicable to
Three- phase four-wire system and is communicating
with MCU through the SPI interface. It’s able to measure
each phase’s information including active power, reactive
power and apparent power in fundamental, harmonics
and full-wave. While it can measuring frequency, current
and voltage RMS, power factor and phase angle. It
reaches the three-phase multifunction energy meter’s
standard.
The ATT7022B integrates 16-bit AD converter an d the
current channel valid values’ linearity error is less than
0.5% when it's in the range of 2 mV to 1 V. Meanwhile
the voltage channel valid values’ linearity error is less
than 0.5%when it’s in the range of 10 mV to 1 V. Each
ADC’s AC signal is inputted by pin VxP and VxN (x
represents 1, 2 ... 7). At the same time VxP and VxN must
be superimposed 2.4 V DC bias voltages. The bias volt-
age REFO is provided by an external reference voltage.
The energy metering chip and MCU hardware connec-
tion diagram is shown in Figure 2.
Primary system’s voltage and current transform by the
transformer and be sampled by the three-phase metering
chip then input differentially. The 1.2 K resistor and 0.01
uF capacitors constitute an anti-aliasin g filter in VxP and
VxN’s input circuit. Its structure and parameters must be
symmetry and take good temperature performance com-
ponents to ensur e obtain good temperature char acteristics.
Measurement chip power in +5 V and SCK pin provides
synchronous clock signal. The /CS pin transports chip
select signals, which are passed in MOSI and MISO
lines.
2) Real-time Clock Module
The real-time clock chip is power in + 5 V, and high-
precision 32.768 kHz crystal oscillator is internal, corre-
sponds to the I2C-BUS’s high-speed mode (400 kHz).
The chip’s year, month, day, week, hour, minu te, second
are respectively expressed as BCD code, and Transmit
fixed-cycle interrupt instruction to the MCU.
In this paper, MCU collect power utility information
and received real time price from system master station,
then stored in the MCU’s Flash EEPROM with the re-
al-time clock chip’s read-out time. Thus, th e information
stored in the memory with a time scale and the users
query conveniently through the keyboard. Then the clock
chip interrupts the MCU’s IRQ pin per month (assuming
on the 1st). After interrupt MCU aggregate the power
consumption and electricity prices and sent them to the
host through the wireless.
Figure 1. The structure diagram of system hardware.
CTA
1.2K
R3
0.01uf
C1
1.2K
R4
10
R1
10
R2
0.01uf
C2
REFO V1P
V1N V2P
V2N
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
the same as A phase
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
B voltage and current
C voltage and current
N voltage
A phase
V4P
V4N
V3P
V3N
V6P
V6N
V5P
V5N
V7P
V7N
1 2
3 4
ATT7022B MCS12DG128
MCU
SPI BUSDOUT
DIN
SCLK
/CS
MISO
MOSI
SCk
/SS
PTA
1.2K
R5
0.01uf
C3
0.01uf
C4 1.2KR6
10K
R7
10K
R8 REFO
REFO
A voltage
Figure 2. The hardware design of electric energy metering.

H. L. Xie ET AL. 1359
3) The wireless communication module
Wireless communication module function as an inter-
mediary for smart meters to exchange data with the mas-
ter system. MCU and the wireless communication mod-
ule are connected as shown in Figure 4.
The MCU and wireless module are isolated by the op-
tocoupler isolation device, to avoid interference by serial
communication. The wireless module’s model is XL05-
232AP2, and it is an UART interface, half-duplex wire-
less transmission module. It works in the 433 MHz pub-
lic band, in line with European ETSI standards
(EN300-220-1 and EN301-439-3) and meets the wireless
control requirements. We don’t need to apply frequency
usage license. The module’s serial rate is 1200 bps, data
format is 8 N1, transmission distance is 6000 m and it is
power in + 5 V. It is suitable for a small amount of data,
low-rate, long-distance communication, to meet the
smart meters and the master system’s wireless commu-
nication requirement. In the master system configured
the same type of wireless modules, you can form a
many-to-one communication mode.
4) Keyboard and screen
The keyboard is composed by a 3 × 3 keys matrix and
is connected to the MCU by 6 data line. Th e screen is the
YB12864-Z LCD display module, integrated a ST7920
controller and its operating voltage is +5 V. The LCD
controller integrated the character base. Characters can
be written directly in the program and the lengthy code
conversed from matrix Printer software do not need any
more. The screen mainly completes the task of display
energy information and real-time tariff.
Keyboard and display hardware is shown in Figure 5.
5) Power Management Module
The design of the power circuit is particularly important
to the smart meters performance. The VCC (Volt Current
Condenser)’s operating voltage must be stable at +5 V
5% (All devices operating vo ltage ar e + 5 V) . Figure
6 is a three-phase supply schematic diagram. The VCC

Real Time Clock
SCL
SDA
/INTA
PortH7/SCl
PortJ6/SDA
/IRQ
I2C BUS
MCS12DG128
MCU
Figure 3. The hardware design of real-time clock.
wireless comm unicati on
RXD
GND
TXD
TXD
GND
RXD
RS-232
MCS12DG128
MCU
Opto-couplersisolation
Figure 4. The hardware design of wireless communication.
.....
PortT0
PortT7
DB0
DB7
......
PortS0
PortS1
PortS2
PortS3
E
RS
RW
PSB
MCU
MCS12DG128
YB12864-Z
display module
PortM0
PortM1
PortM2
PortM3
PortM4
PortM5
D1
D2
D3
D4
D5
D6
3*3 matrix keyboard
Figure 5. The hardware design of keyboard and display.
0.1uf
C2
100uf
C1
0.1uf
C4
1000uf
C3
1 2 3
LM7805
+5V
Bridge2
Bridge1
Bridge3
A
N
B
N
C
N
10K
R1
10K
R2
+5V
+2.4V
Figure 6. The hardware design of power management.
supply REFO reference potential in the way of resistive
voltage division. By adjusting the variable resistor R2 we
can get + 2.4 V power.
3. Software Design
3.1. The Main Program
Figure 7 is the main program flow.
Initialization include the MCU pin state initialization,
AD, RS-232, I2C bus, SPI bus initialization, the real-time
clock’s initial value settings, energy metering chip ini-
tialization and display chip initialization and so on. Pro-
cedures and working pr incipl es are des cribed below.
3.2. Procedures Design
1) Energy metering program design
The ATT7022B’s SPI communication Format is 8-bit
address, 24-bit data, MSB in the front, LSB in the back,
when each register read and write one time, CS need ac-
tion one time. SCLK is low at the beginning of commu-

H. L. Xie ET AL.
1360
nication and CS change low from high. After 32 clock
pulses, SCLK and CS change from low to high, a register
read or write operation is done. The ATT702 2B takes the
data sent by microcontroller from the DIN line on the
falling edge of the clock signal, and sends data to micro-
controller from the DOUT line on the clock signal’s ris-
ing edge.
The ATT7022B can read all measured values from the
measurement parameter register and do three times data
updates per second. These parameters are each phase’s
and split phase’s power, fundamental’s, harmonics’ and
full-wave’s active power, reactive power, apparent power,
power factor, phase angle, voltage angle, the loss of
pressure detection, frequency and temperature, etc. Be-
cause the measured quantities are so many, we must or-
ganize and storage the data metered, processed and re-
corded reasonab le to check easily[12] .
2) Real-time clock program design
MCU communicates with real-time clock through I2C
bus by the SDA and SCL. By combining the SDA and
SCL signals, the MCU determine if start or top commu-
nication, data transmission, signals reception and re-
sponse to the master system. At the non-communication
time, the SCL and SDA signals are maintained in HIGH
state. The start and end of the communication is con-
trolled by the SDA signal’s rise or fall while the SCL is
in the High state.
MCU acquires time by reading the real-time clock
chip’s internal registers, and set the clo ck chip generate a
Figure 7. The main program flow.
fixed cycle interrupt at the same time. On the 1st of the
month a falling edge transition occurs to the MCU’s
/IRQ pin. The MCU receives interrupt instruction, then
sent the power consumption information aggregation and
cost statistics to the System Master.
3) Design of wireless communication procedures
Wireless receive mode is set to receiver through the
serial port interrupt. When the system master sent data
through the wireless module (including commands and
real-time price), the register R1 is set to enter the inter-
rupt response and the SBUF register receive data in pre-
defined format. Then MCU will read the real-time clock
module’s time, store received information and time in-
formation in the MCU’s Flash E2PROM. The MCU
needs to send the acquired information to the System
Master via wireless after executing the program so that
the Master can always monitor the energy meter’s status
and users’ power consumption information. The data
received by smart meters or the System Master will au-
tomatically re-send to the transmission side. The sender
will compare the received data and the previously trans-
mitted data. Only ex actly the same the data is considered
successfully sent, otherwise it will re-send the data.
4) Keyboard an d display program design
Action of the 9 keys on the keyboard will cause the
PortM0 to PortM5’s potential changes and MCU will
respond accordingly
MCU control YB12864-Z LCD display module
through 8 data lines and 4 control lines. Under normal
circumstances, the LCD module’s backlight is turned off.
Its backlight will turn on when keys are operated, an d the
screen shows relevant information.
5) Alarm processing
The Alarm includes side voltage power failure alarm
and the frequency alarm. Metering chip’s internal voltage
detection circuit will judge whether the A, B, C three-
phase are power failure according to the set threshold
voltage. It will be represented by Bit0/1/2 of state flag
register (Sflag). When a phase loss of power, the corre-
sponding flag bit become 1. Take B phase for example, if
the B phase loss of power, the Sflag’s Bit0/1/2 will
change into 010(B) and send the abnormal information to
the System Master through the wireless module. The
frequency alarm begin to work if the metering chip de-
tects the frequency fluctuation is over 50HZ 5%.

4. Conclusions
Under the background of real-time electricity prices the-
ory put forward by smart grid, design a wireless two-way
communication smart meters. It uses the metering chip
ATT7022B, real-time clock chip RX-8025SA and
RS-232 wireless module XL05-232AP2. It has no only
the basic power, voltage and current measurement func-
tion, but also calculating fees and alarm function. At the

H. L. Xie ET AL.
1361
same time, it can store power consumption information
with the time scale and the spot price. Also it can com-
municate with the System Master in two-way wireless
way. It implements the information exchange between
smart meters (the client) and the System Master (sup-
ply-side), fully reflects the smart grid’s interaction.
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