Monjolo: An Energy-Harvesting Energy Meter Architecture
Samuel DeBruin, Brad Campbell, Prabal Dutta

Citation
Samuel DeBruin, Brad Campbell, Prabal Dutta. "Monjolo: An Energy-Harvesting Energy Meter Architecture". Sensys'13: The ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, November, 2013.

Abstract
Conventional AC power meters perform at least two distinct functions: power conversion, to supply the meter itself, and energy metering, to measure the load consumption. This paper presents Monjolo, a new energy-metering architecture that combines these two functions to yield a new design point in the metering space. The key insight underlying this work is that the output of a current transformer – nominally used to measure a load current – can be harvested and used to intermittently power a wireless sensor node. The hypothesis is that the node’s activation frequency increases monotonically with the primary load’s draw, making it possible to estimate load power from the interval between activations, assuming the node consumes a fixed energy quanta during each activation. This paper explores this thesis by designing, implementing, and evaluating the Monjolo metering architecture. The results demonstrate that it is possible to build a meter that draws zero-power under zero-load conditions, offers high accuracy for near-unity power factor loads, works with non-unity power factor loads in combination with a whole-house meter, wirelessly reports readings to a data aggregator, is resilient to communication failures, and is parsimonious with the radio channel, even under heavy loads. Monjolo eliminates the high-voltage AC-DC power supply and AC metering circuitry present in earlier designs, enabling a smaller, simpler, safer, and lower-cost design point that supports novel deployment scenarios like non-intrusive circuit-level metering.

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Citation formats

• HTML

  Samuel DeBruin, Brad Campbell, Prabal Dutta. <a
  href="http://www.terraswarm.org/pubs/108.html"
  >Monjolo: An Energy-Harvesting Energy Meter
  Architecture</a>, Sensys'13: The ACM Conference on
  Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, November, 2013.

• Plain text

  Samuel DeBruin, Brad Campbell, Prabal Dutta. "Monjolo:
  An Energy-Harvesting Energy Meter Architecture".
  Sensys'13: The ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor
  Systems, November, 2013.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{DeBruinCampbellDutta13_MonjoloEnergyHarvestingEnergyMeterArchitecture,
      author = {Samuel DeBruin and Brad Campbell and Prabal Dutta},
      title = {Monjolo: An Energy-Harvesting Energy Meter
                Architecture},
      booktitle = {Sensys'13: The ACM Conference on Embedded
                Networked Sensor Systems},
      month = {November},
      year = {2013},
      abstract = {Conventional AC power meters perform at least two
                distinct functions: power conversion, to supply
                the meter itself, and energy metering, to measure
                the load consumption. This paper presents Monjolo,
                a new energy-metering architecture that combines
                these two functions to yield a new design point in
                the metering space. The key insight underlying
                this work is that the output of a current
                transformer – nominally used to measure a load
                current – can be harvested and used to
                intermittently power a wireless sensor node. The
                hypothesis is that the node’s activation
                frequency increases monotonically with the primary
                load’s draw, making it possible to estimate load
                power from the interval between activations,
                assuming the node consumes a fixed energy quanta
                during each activation. This paper explores this
                thesis by designing, implementing, and evaluating
                the Monjolo metering architecture. The results
                demonstrate that it is possible to build a meter
                that draws zero-power under zero-load conditions,
                offers high accuracy for near-unity power factor
                loads, works with non-unity power factor loads in
                combination with a whole-house meter, wirelessly
                reports readings to a data aggregator, is
                resilient to communication failures, and is
                parsimonious with the radio channel, even under
                heavy loads. Monjolo eliminates the high-voltage
                AC-DC power supply and AC metering circuitry
                present in earlier designs, enabling a smaller,
                simpler, safer, and lower-cost design point that
                supports novel deployment scenarios like
                non-intrusive circuit-level metering.},
      URL = {http://terraswarm.org/pubs/108.html}
  }
  

Posted by Mila MacBain on 19 Sep 2013.