A novel substitute for the meter readers in a resource constrained electricity utility

Abstract

A novel scheme has been proposed where the consumers will use their mobile phone cameras to take the photograph of respective meter's display panel along with the kWh (kilo-watt hour) information once a month and send it as an image to the utility servers using the MMS (Multimedia Message Service) from their mobile phones. The server will process the image, retrieve the kWh information, convert it into a text (number) and archive it against the consumer's mobile number or identity code. The way this can be implemented is illustrated.