Trends towards standard communications for metering

Communication is becoming an integral part of electric utility metering. Currently the communication method can vary from a mechanical register for local reading to a simple pulsed output for collection by external equipment to an industry standard RS232 port for use with remote communications. All of these methods have proven to be reliable for many years but the emergence of new standards may mean metering should be looking to the future. This paper looks at three existing technologies-IrDA, Internet and ISDN-which may become the new metering communications standards. Between them, they will offer solutions for low cost metering applications, all the way through to the most complex polyphase requirements. The use of Internet may also offer the customer access to their own metering data and the ability to analyse that data.