Hardware smart meter anti-stealing electrical isolation sensor

At present, most of the civilian and commercial buildings in the United States still use old-fashioned electromechanical meters to track the use of electricity. These meters are reliable and inexpensive, but are not suitable for power distribution systems that require precise, repeatable metering and wired or wireless communications, in other words, are not suitable for the upcoming smartgrid power distribution system.

Smart grids rely on smart meters with full communication capabilities to monitor energy usage, enabling residents and business consumers to make informed decisions about energy usage and time of use. However, smart grids also face difficulties. Although in the federal government, Washington has passed relevant legislation, such as the Energy Act of 2007 and the stimulus plan of 2009, utilities are actually distributing electricity on a state-by-state basis. In preparation for the smart grid, California and Texas are the two states that are most active in smart metering.

Regardless of whether the smart grid can proceed smoothly and seamlessly in some form at the (United States) national level, sufficient independent utilities are already purchasing and installing electronic meters, making it an important market. In the next 10 years, global utility companies may have to replace 500 million meters.

The smart meter consists of a microcontroller with an onboard ADC and DAC, a voltage and current sensing element, an AC/DC power converter, a backup battery, and wireless or wired communication functions.

In addition to intelligence and communication capabilities, smart meters need to be able to prevent tampering.

Several companies provide meter ICs, including Texas Instruments, ON Semiconductor Corporation, Maxim, Analog Devices, Teridian, and e2v. These ICs are basically microcontrollers. They track the usage information of the electricity and the information returned from the utility. They can perform some DSP operations on the voltage waveform and quality, send the information to a display, and store the information to be sent. .