Perpetual and low-cost power meter for monitoring residential and industrial appliances

The recent research efforts in smart grids and residential power management are oriented to monitor pervasively the power consumption of appliances in domestic and non-domestic buildings. Knowing the status of a residential grid is fundamental to keep high reliability levels while real time monitoring of electric appliances is important to minimize power waste in buildings and to lower the overall energy cost. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are a key enabling technology for this application field because they consist of low-power, non-invasive and cost-effective intelligent sensor devices. We present a wireless current sensor node (WCSN) for measuring the current drawn by single appliances. The node can self-sustain its operations by harvesting energy from the monitored current. Two AAA batteries are used only as secondary power supply to guarantee a fast start-up of the system. An active ORing subsystem selects automatically the suitable power source, minimizing power losses typical of the classic diode configuration. The node harvests energy when the power consumed by the device under measurement is in the range 10W÷10kW, which also corresponds to the range of current 50mA÷50A drawn directly from the main. Finally the node features a low-power, 32-bit microcontroller for data processing and a wireless transceiver to send data via the IEEE 802.15.4 standard protocol.