YoMo: the Arduino-based smart metering board

Smart meters are an enabling technology for many smart grid applications. This paper introduces a design for a low-cost smart meter system as well as explaining fundamentals of smart metering. The smart meter platform, provided as open hardware, is designed with a connector interface compatible to the Arduino platform, thus opening the possibilities for smart meters with flexible hardware and computation features, starting from low-cost 8 bit micro controllers up to powerful single board computers that can run Linux. The metering platform features a current transformer which allows a non-intrusive installation of the current measurement unit. The suggested design can switch loads, offers a variable sampling frequency, and provides measurement data such as active power, reactive and apparent power. Results indicate that measurement accuracy and resolution of the proposed metering platform are sufficient for a range of different applications and loads from a few watts up to 5 kW.