Design and implementation of a multi-tenant prepaid electricity management system (MPEMS) for single phase customers

Abstract

With the introduction of YAKA system in Uganda in around 2011, which acts as a prepaid billing system, many landlords have taken it up as it saves them from having wrangles with their tenants over power bills as the tenants can manage their power bills and pay direct to the Umeme Company. However, due to the high costs of installing these meters, landlords have resorted into making their tenants share the same meter as in a single block, you can find over six people sharing the same YAKA meter and also sharing the power bills which is difficult tell how much of the power each consumes. Since the tenants can’t tell how much power is consumed by each individual as they have different appliances, many of these tenants end up having quarrels over power. The development of this system was therefore motivated by the need to solve this problem. The system will monitor the power consumed by each tenant, display the energy consumption of each tenant on the lcd in real time, automatically disconnect the tenant whose units have been used up, while leaving those who still have units to run. This will help eliminates the problem of people paying overdue. Two sockets have been used each representing a single tenant for demonstration purposes.