DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ELECTRONIC BILLING SYSTEM (CASE STUDY OF PHCN)

ABSTRACT

Meter reading is an important part of billing system for residential and commercial buildings. This often does not reflect the exact or true electricity consumption of such buildings, resulting in an inefficient bill mainly due to human errors. Thus, it is essential to have an efficient and effective system for this measurement purposes as it is fully embraced by the power holding company of Nigeria (PHCN).

This project is about the design and construction of Electronic billing system. The system is used to measure accurately the electric power consumed by a residential or commercial buildings which is more economical compared to the electromechanical devices.

Utility companies can directly monitor and control electrical power supply billing of its spatially distributed consumers without engaging the services of meter readers i.e. operators or officers of (PHCN). The meter displays the sale rate of power and the consumed power per minute, respectively.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• INTRODUCTION:

Tradition meter reading for electricity consumption and billing is done by human operator from houses to houses and building to building. This requires huge number of labor operators and long working hour to achieve complete area data reading and billing. Human operator are prone to reading error as sometime the houses electric power meter is place in a location where it is not easily accessible. Labor billing job is sometime also restricted and slowed down by bad weather condition. Printed billing has the tendency of residential housing and commercial building in the developing country such as for example, Malaysia require more operators and longer working hours to complete the meter reading tasks. This increases the energy provider operation costs for meter reading. In order to achieve efficient meter reading, reduce billing error and operation costs, Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) system play an important role to address the above mentioned problems. AMR is an effective mean of data collection that allow substantial saving through the reduction of meter re-read, greater data accuracy, allow frequent reading, improved billing and customer service, more timely energy profiles and consumption trends updates, and better deployment of human resource [1]. With the advent of digital technology, analogue electro-mechanical meter is continuously replaced by digital electronic meter. Digital energy meter offer greater convenience to implement and establish automatic meter reading system electronically. Efficiency and reliability of retrieving meter reading in the AMR system was a major challenge. Various AMR methods and technologies using Power Line Carrier  (PLC) Communications, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), telephone modem, internet, Ethernet, embedded RF module, wifi, bluetooth and zigbeebee were established and developed to provide and demonstrate the solution of efficiency, relisbility snd effectiveness of AMR.

• STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

Customers could not have time to go to PHCN office to make payment for the electricity they have consumed due to the limited time they have and also the nature of their jobs.

• JUSTIFICATION OF STUDY

The research, which is embarked upon becomes imperative when the utility companies can directly monitor and control electrical power supply billing of its spatially distributed consumers without engaging the services of meter readers

• AIM AND OBJECTIVES

AIM

          The aim of this project is to effectively develop the electronic billing system in replacement of the existing manual billing system.

OBJECTIVES

The following are the specific objectives of this research work.

• To eradicate the difficulty and risk involved in manually distributing the bills and transferring liquid cash from one place to another in the bid to make payment.
• To demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of automatic meter reading and billing in an enabling environment through the use of graphical user interface (GUI).
• To evaluate the benefits associated with computerized billing system and its functional implementation

• SCOPE OF STUDY

The proposed system is expected to be very effective as regards to the checking and payment of bills and also requires meeting the enormous needs of PHCN Dugbe business unit.

     1.6         METHODOLOGY

This involved several ways that were employed to gather the necessary data/information used in the course this study and this includes Personal Interview with the officers of PHCN, Reading of journal and direct observation were extensively observed.

1.7         DEFINITION OF TERMS

1. HTML – (Hypertext Markup Language). The coding used to create hypertext document for use on the World Wide Web HTML, look a lot like old fashioned typesetting code. Where you surround a block of text with code that indicate how it should appear. The ‘hyper’ in Hyper comes from the fact that on HYPL, you can specify that a block of text, or an image is linked to another file on the internet. HTML files are meant to be viewed using a ‘web browser’.

1. HTTP – (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). The protocol for moving hypertext files across the internet requires a HTTP server client program on one end and HTTP server program (such as Apache) on the other end. HTTP is the most important protocol used in the world wide web(WWW).

• HYPERTEXT – Generally, any text that contains links to other documents words or phrases in the documents that can be chosen by a reader and which cause another document to be received and displayed.

1. CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) – A standard for specifying the appearance of text and documents, CSS was developed for the use HTML in web pages but it also used other situation, notably application built using XPEE.CSS is typically used to provide a single ‘library’ of styles that are used over and over throughout a large number of related document as in website. A CSS file might specify that all numbered lists are to appear in italics. By changing that single specification, the look of large number of document can be easily changed.

1. ASP (Application Server Provider) – An organization (usually a business) that runs one or more application on their own server and provides (usually for a free) access to other common example of services provider include web based software such as calendar system, human tools (time shoats, benefit, etc) various application to help group collaborate on project.

1. PHP (Hypertext Preprocessors) – It is a programming language used almost excessively for creating software that is part of a website. The PHP is designed to be used to create web pages unlike HTML, the PHP code is read and processed by the web server software (HTML is read and processed by the web browser software).

• SQL (Structure Query Language) – Is a specialized language for sending queries to database.

• Website – This is a set of related web pages containing content such as text, images, video, audio etc. A website is hosted on at least one web server accessible via a network such as the internet through an internet address known as a uniform resource locator.

1. VAT – (Value added tax) A tax levied on the difference between a commodity’s price before taxes and its cost of production.

1. Web – The World Wide Web (abbreviated as WWW IS commonly known as the Web or the “Information Superhighway”), is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia, and navigate between them via hyperlinks.
2. Web Pages – Aweb page or webpage is a document or information resource that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext links. Web pages frequently subsume other resources such as style sheets, scripts and images into their final presentation.

• Record – A recording, Record, Records or The Record an item or collection of data

• Rating – A rating is the evaluation or assessment of something, in terms of quality (as with a critic rating a novel), quantity (as with an athlete being rated by his or her statistics), or some combination of both.

• Payment – A payment is the transfer of money from one party (such as a person or company) to another. A payment is usually made in exchange for the provision of goods, services or both, or to fulfill a legal obligation.

1. KWH (KILOWATT) – The kilowatt (symbolized kWh) is a unit of energy equivalent to one kilowatt (1 kW) of power expended.

• Invoices – An invoice or bill is a commercial document issued by a seller to the buyer, indicating the products, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services the seller has provided the buyer. An invoice indicates the buyer must pay the seller, according to the payment terms. The buyer has a maximum amount of days to pay for these goods and is sometimes offered a discount if paid before the due date.

• FORM – Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object.

• ACCOUNT – An account is a way of recording transactions. An account (in bookkeeping) refers to assets, liabilities, income, expenses, and equity, as represented by individual ledger pages, to which changes in value are chronologically recorded with debit and credit entries.
• CUSTOMER – A customer (also known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product, or idea, obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier for a monetary or other valuable consideration.

1. FIXED CHARGE – Any type of fixed expense that recurs on a regular basis. Fixed charges can include insurance, salaries, utilities, vehicle payments, loan payments and mortgage payments. These charges allow both individuals and businesses to create more predictable budgets and estimate their cash flows more accurately.

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