FORM 2
(39 of 1970) &
THE PATENT RULES, 2003
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION [see section 10 and rule 13]
TITLE OF THE INVENTION :
"PHOTO METER READING AND BILL PRINTING".
APPLICANT(s) :
MAHARASHTRA STATE ELECTRICITY
DISTRIBUTION COMPANY LIMITED,
A CORPORATION ORGANISED AND EXISTING UNDER
THE LAWS OF INDIA WHOSE ADDRESS IS
PRAKASHGAD, PLOT NO G-9, PROF ANANT KANEKAR
MARG, BANDRA (E) MUMBAI - 400 052
The following Specification describes the invention :-

FIELD OF THE INVENTION -
This invention relates to a method of Photo Meter Reading and Bill Printing.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION -
In this technological age, Electricity is one of the most important necessities of man kind, without which it is very difficult for him to survive. Every edifice, whether it is a Dwelling house, a Factory, a Trade or a Business or any enterprise is provided with meters which maintain a record of the amount of energy consumed by the consumers. This helps the Power distributors to thus bill the consumers according to the amount of power consumption as denoted by the meters and thus generate revenue for them.
Thus the meter reading and billing is a very important aspect for the power suppliers. The present invention thus provides for a method of billing which is more accurate and transparent.
PRIOR ART -
Various methods are known in the art for noting the meter reading. Traditionally the meter reading was manual. Presently, at many places the meter reading work has been out sourced and different methods are employed such as direct meter reading, Spot Billing, reading through MRI (RAM- CRAM) machines etc. All these systems have there own shortcomings.
The manual meter reading is very time consuming and also there are lot of human errors committed
Out sourcing of the meter reading gives rise to new sets of problems. The people to whom the work is given some times do not visit the consumers place and without taking the meter reading manipulate the

readings For which the Power suppliers has no proof when printed on the bills. Also, they sometimes connive with the consumers, take money from them and show lesser readings, thereby causing a loss of revenue to the Power suppliers
Another system being practiced is the spot billing It also has its own lacunae. In this system the wear and tear of the printers of the hand held device is high and hence its maintenance cost is also very high. Further more, the Bills generated by this system does not display all the required components of the bill causing inconvenience to both the billing authorities as well as the consumer's, hence they have become obsolete now
Billing by photography is practiced at some places but it does not display all the required components and the bill is not in PDF Format.
Many cases of meter tampering are also reported And Last but not the least the customer's grievances are very high as the present billing system lacks authenticity.
To overcome all the above mentioned shortcomings, a system of digital photography along with the storing, retrieving of the data and bill printing has been devised for billing This invention purports to thus ensure that the meters are read correctly, on time and the consumers are satisfied about the correct meter reading for which they are billed without loss of revenue to the power suppliers
Hence it is the objective of the present invention to -■
Improve the correctness of the readings and the overall reading efficiency.
It is also the objective to make the Visual image of the meter available as proof of the reading
Further it is the objective to resolve the complaints of the consumers with the help of photographs.

Also it is the objective to find out the consumers with meter tampering, meters with broken seal etc with the help of photos.
Another objective is to simplify the bill printing through the generation of the of the bills in the PDF.
Furthermore another objective is to develop a system which also generates different reports like list of consumers having abnormal consumption, excessive consumption, zero consumption, below average consumption etc. which helps to figure out the problems.
Above all it is the objective to reduce the no of complaints of the consumer's and authenticate the billing system.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION -
On every meter of the low tension billing customer's premises, a sticker having details such as the consumer no., billing unit no and Distribution Transformer Center (DTC) Code shall be pasted Same sticker shall also be pasted on the surface of the meter board, as well as on the door of the consumer's premises. The route reading sheets are prepared as a one time job
Every month, the meter reader will visit the premises of the consumer and photograph the meter in such a way, that attributes such as the meter reading, meter manufacturer's no., and consumer no's sticker along with the day and time stamp is clearly visible in the Photograph. The camera to be used for this operation should be 30 Mega Pixel or above. The images are then downloaded to the computer. Then the consumer's data is fed into the computer using the software designed and after the corresponding data storage and retrieval method as per the claimed invention the bill is generated in "PDF" Format along with the required details.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS -
The invention will become clearer upon the perusal of the diagrams
• Fig. 1 is a data flow diagram showing
the photo meter entry system.
• Fig. 2 is a B30 validation system.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS -
The inventors have developed software for data entry This software helps the data entry operator to make entries of the consumer no. and meter reading from the digital photograph, it takes the "PN 33 file (contains consumer's previous reading, average consumption etc.) from low tension billing system. This is used to collect and to validate the information required to generate B30 file. After reading all these details about the consumers it generates a B30 File in text format. The images are renamed in consumer no + pc + bill month (yymm) format. The size of the image is also minimized. The image is converted to ".tif" format. This system also generates few exception reports. Such as -
1. List of Consumers having Excessive Consumption
2. List of Consumers having Abnormal Consumption.
3. List of Consumers having zero Consumption.
4. List of Consumers having 1 to 30 Units consumption in a month.
5 List of Tampered Consumers.
6. List of Consumers having 25% variation in consumption.
7. List of Consumers whose meter is changed.
8. List of Consumers whose meter is not read with reason.
9. Statistics for Total No. of Consumers, Consumers Read, Consumers not read.
10. Statistics of Meter Status wise No of Consumers

FORMAT OF B30 FILE -
B30 file contains following details The records are of length 80 characters. Each record contains information of two consumers

Characters 00-03 : B30
Characters 04-15 : Consumer no of first consumer
Character 16 : PC of first consumer
Character 17 : Meter Status of meter 1 of first consumer,
Characters 18-23 : Reading of meter 1 of first consumer
Character 24 : Meter Status of meter 2 of first consumer
Characters 25-30 : Reading of meter 2 of first consumer
Characters 31-38 : Spot bill amount
Characters 39-50 : Consumer no. of first consumer
Character 51 : PC of first consumer
Characters 52 : Meter Status of meter 1 of first consumer
Characters 53-58 : Reading of meter 1 of first consumer
Characters 59 : Meter Status of meter 2 of first consumer
Characters 60 – 65 : Reading of meter 2 of first consumer
Characters 66 – 73 : Spot bill amount
Characters 74 : Sequence no
Characters 75-80 : Batch no.
As shown in Figure - 2 the inventors have further developed a software to validate and check the integrity of the data in the B30 file The validation is performed with the help of the B01 header The B01 header is a record in the B30 file which contains the summary of the records in the B30 file First, it checks whether the no of records present are matching with B01 header. Then it checks the village code in the B30 file with the village code in the village code directory
The village code directory is part of the Low Tension billing system After the validation of the village code the software checks the validity of the consumer no and processing cycle by comparing it with the "con" file of Low Tension billing system And finally it checks for the validity of the meter status of the consumer, if any of the validation checks is failed the B30 file is rejected If the validation is successful the validated file is used to update the billing database

Using the legacy systems the bills of the consumers are calculated and stored into the billing database
Another module which is developed by the inventors is in the existing "Consumer Monitoring System" for inserting the digital images into the oracle database and printing bill It reads the bill components, due date and meter photo from the "Bill-info" table of the billing database and prints it in the "PDF" format. This is achieved by using the 'Oracle Report Developer" tool. The bill components are fixed charges, electricity charges, electricity duty, fuel adjustment charge, additional supply charge, tax on sale, interest of arrears, penalty on capacitor, total bill amount etc These bills can be printed on preprinted stationary with the help of laser printer. The bill will display the bill amount, due date, bill components, the photo showing meter with the current reading, and the barcode The 48 digit barcode consist of different components like billing unit code, consumer no, due date etc. A copy of the bill is attached herewith.