Capital Power Systems Ltd.

SMART
METER
 Record electricity consumption by the half hour;
 Be remotely read so a meter reader does not have to
visit your home or business;
 Provide consumption and price information via an in-
home display
 Enable billing queries to be resolved quickly
 Allow remote connection of your electricity
 Help electricity distributor to detect and locate outages
and restore supply more quickly; and
 Monitor the quality of your electricity supply
 ENERGY METER IN PAST

Electromechanical Meters:
These are basically induction type meters where rotation is
proportional to the energy being consumed.

Limitations of Electromechanical Meter

a) Difficult to achieve high class accuracy.
b) Drift in accuracy
c) Tamper Prone:
By Tilting
Load connected to earth
 ELECTRONIC ENERGY
METER
A watt-hour meter in which current and voltage act on a solid
state (Electronic) elements to produce an output proportional to
energy is called electronic/ static energy meter. The electronic
energy meter can be classified into two groups :

 ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit )

based energy meter
 Micro Controller based energy meter

Advantages

Very High Accuracy

Control – FULL
Communications – Built in (on chip / PCB)
Theft Detection – High (Network level)
 ISSUES WITH STAND-ALONE METER
READING
 Highly Person dependant.
 Human errors cannot be avoided.
 Accessibility of meters in rural/ Agricultural zones.
 Energy Audits performed based on bill collection
which is highly inaccurate.
 Billing done mainly on estimated/ monthly average
basis
 Inability to monitor and control discrete loads
 Billing cycle requires excessive time.
 Meter data used only for billing, cannot help in
analysis like demand analysis, energy audit,
pinpointing losses, etc.
 COMMUNICATION
MODES
IN ELECTRONIC
Majority of the electronic energy meters METER
have communication
facility in the form of an optically isolated pair of Transmitter and
Receiver.

For transporting the data from the energy meter to the Host PC a
communication media is necessary i.e.

 Optical Port
 GSM
 LPR
 IR
 OPTICAL PORT
Optical Port interconnecting two Intelligent Electronic
Devices (IED’s) for electronic communication.

 There is a wire for each signal, together with the ground signal (reference
for voltage levels).
 This interface is useful for point-to-point communication at slow speeds.
 For example, port COM1 in a PC can be used for a mouse, port COM2 for
a modem, etc. This is an example of point-to-point communication: one
port, one device.
 Due to the way the signals are connected, a common ground is required.
 Shortly, RS 232 was designed for communication of local devices, and
supports one transmitter and one receiver.

LIMITATIONS
This implies limited cable length - about 30 to 60 meters maximum. (Main
problems are interference and resistance of the cable.)
 BLOCK DIAGRAM OF
OPTICAL PORT

Optical Port

Energy
Meter PC or CMRI
 Introduction to AMR
1) Automatic Meter Reading is a process of digitally “noting” the
energy meter reading(s).
2) This process eliminates the errors associated with manual
reading/recording/processing of the meter data

AMR came into existence since energy meters turned intelligent

which dates back to the deployment of microcontrollers in energy
meters.

AMR has been evolving for the last two decades and has two broad
classification based on the distance between the meter reading
station and the target meter.
 Meter reading, a retrospection

Meter readings is the feedback loop for the utility’s efficient operation,
and besides completing the revenue cycle, the meter reading provides
vital data for the following utility operation:

Engineering Group Tariffs formulation

Meter Data
Energy Audit Electricity regulator

Load Research

Billing
 GSM (GLOBAL SYSTEM FOR
MOBILE COMMUNICATION)
A GSM network is composed of several functional entities, whose
functions and interfaces are specified. The GSM network can be
divided into three broad parts.

 The Mobile Station is carried by the subscriber.

 The Base Station Subsystem controls the radio link with the
Mobile Station.
 The Network Subsystem, the main part of which is the Mobile
services Switching Center (MSC), performs the switching of
calls between the mobile users, and between mobile and fixed
network users. The MSC also handles the mobility management
operations.
 The Mobile Station and the Base Station Subsystem
communicate across the Um interface, also known as the air
interface or radio link. The Base Station Subsystem
communicates with the Mobile services Switching Center
across the A interface.
GSM
ARCHITECTURE
 GSM IN TECHNICAL &
COMMERCIAL PROCESS
 LPR (LOW POWER
RADIO)
The LPR system has an advanced option whereby the meters which
are available in the radio range can be identified. The identified
meters are displayed on the MRI screen with the flag of “read” in
case the same are read and their meter readings are available in the
specific MRI.

Following are the distinct advantages of low power radio (LPR)

1) Reading of inaccessible meters like meters connected on pole-top

for tamper deterrence or reading the Distribution transformer
meter installed at a height to protect it from vandalism.
2) Reading of meters in an industrial area from a centralized
location.
3) Establishing an ad-hoc wireless monitoring station for industrial
area / tamper prone zone.
4) Collecting meter reading in locked properties.
5) Meter readings in un-safe or prohibited areas.
 LPR

Server (May be
LPR PC or CMRI)

LPR

Remotely read meters over a 100-150 mtrs range with mobile

radio.
System Block Diagram
 Polling
Polling is a technique by which a single data collection device can be
shared with multiple meters (or slave devices) without changing any
hardware configurations like switching.

Transmit line

Energy Energy Energy Energy

Meter 1 Meter 2 Meter 3 Meter n