Smart Grid In The Importance Of Smart Meters

U.S. Department of Energy report in 2009 highlighted the Smart Grid: Smart meters are the basis of smart grid. It is not only to the power companies and consumers and electricity consumption times the relevant information, but also to obtain market power conditions to help coordinate the operation of electrical equipment and adjust the energy consumption.
If not widely and deeply to the success of every family to provide such advanced metering technology and related services, will widen the energy gap between supply and demand, thus weakening the smart grid infrastructure, operational efficiency, so that the public interest to suffer. On the other hand, according to Edison Electric Institute President Tom Kuhn's view, successful development of advanced metering systems need to adopt a new communication scheme, encryption technology, take advantage of a new generation of highly reliable, highly secure, low-cost integration of smart metering program. Development of the Smart Grid is one of the major challenges facing the cost, according to incomplete statistics, the power companies in the high cost of metering equipment for up to 270 billion U.S. dollars.
Smart grid, power consumers, if not the most important factor, but also need to focus on the design factors. The challenge here is to change consumer habits and attitudes, by improving transparency and interoperability important information to help consumers "choose" to use energy, and fully understand the reasonable "choice" benefits. Fortunately, the energy crisis, the people began to attach importance to energy efficiency, industries have begun to participate in the development of energy efficient products, and consumer-oriented energy management and automation products (such as intelligent devices, Internet portal and similar services) development . Therefore, this is the general trend. From a global perspective, the current 1.6 billion electricity meters installed in only 6% of two-way communication with the smart meters.
Consumers in the dynamic pricing information or other economic interests, driven by its sights and adjust energy consumption to help reduce the "smart devices." Pricing information is not necessarily obtained through a dedicated smart meters, also available through a broadband router / gateway and other users to send Internet device. For power companies and their users, the two transmission channels have advantages and disadvantages, you need to weigh the information security (privacy), network security, and interoperability between various devices and commercial circulation and other factors. The most basic requirements are: two technology can work alone, but also can work together. Currently focused on the effectiveness of smart devices, integrates smart meters and dynamic price adjustment structure of the device can give a more clear result, significantly reduce peak electricity use, thereby effectively reduce energy costs. Most of the initial work is based on a simple decision algorithm, based on the received price information can more effectively control the operation of equipment on / off status. State control also can be based on more details, such as equipment, measuring the results of the classification, where consumers have more flexibility to control energy use, make more informed choices. This work is still in development stage, depends largely on the consumer requirements of cost-effectiveness of measuring equipment.
Some of the major meter manufacturers have begun to develop smart products, this initiative not only by the federal incentive funds to promote the program, but also by consumers looking for greater transparency, participation and influence. From the power company's point of view, if the increase this transparency, consumers can better understand the true costs of equipment operation, to develop good habits of electricity, or to rely on advanced systems (for example, by Microsoft and Google to create a network of service) control and reduce equipment energy consumption, reduce associated costs, from any perspective, this is after all a win-win result. The design of complex products need to focus on reliability, cost, flexibility and other issues crop. Therefore, the energy measurement for semiconductor products are not like the first generation of total energy as simply, but with greater functionality.
Development process
Even if the $ 400,000,000 in 2010 to support incentive funds for medium and small-scale power companies, the development costs still hinder the development process of the barrier. Smart meter increase in the cost of hardware has increased the risk of return on investment. These costs mainly related to a complex device and communication-related functions, such as data storage, encryption, the connection of multiple appliances grid and two-way communication encryption, and remote relay and additional printed circuit board (PCB) off status display. Also, if you can not successfully demonstrated to the public, the working conditions of these new products is also difficult to obtain public support and understanding.
Another additional cost is that these systems lack sufficient programmability, product upgrades difficult, can not do on the future development of smart grid security and interoperability requirements. Considering these factors, for safety reasons need greater capacity in the design of embedded memory and more powerful communications capabilities, which far exceeds the recent demand for the use, of course, increase system cost.
No one wants to scale the device to the market, soon discovered that the development process because of the intelligent understanding of electricity shortage caused by defective products, and soon was out of the market. Rush to the products to market is not mature enough, will inevitably result in frequent replacement of infrastructure, which will bring the power sector high operating costs, resulting in great waste. People facing more serious design challenges, it should be the basis of these complex structure of the electrical short life and low reliability. Twenty years ago with the old, simple equipment, the new devices include more components and interconnect modules, which can easily lead to frequent replacement of equipment.
Semiconductor device design considerations
Began a large-scale residential meter history of the use of semiconductor technology, but also reflects the problem of the working life of the product. This technology began more than a decade ago, now about 120 million in global new meters, about 85% of the meter using semiconductor technology, the rest are traditional mechanical disk meter Farah.
In 2004, the city of Hyderabad, India, visited the ECE Industrial Equipment Co., Ltd. such a plant, which once was a flourishing factory of mechanical meters, measured from the German company introduced the use of technology, the highest annual production of up to eight million copies. This important industrial factories located in the beautiful garden oasis, it is worth mentioning here was shot multiple times in the classic Bollywood film. However, I visited this plant is that it has a "deserted", the accumulation of some idle equipment, my guide (who served in the factory foreman) sadly explained to me that, because of its advanced anti-tamper function of the rapid development of low-cost semiconductor meter, the plant has been in a completely shutdown state.
Just at that time, China also launched the first generation of integrated A / D converter measurement of surface mount ASIC, the device is the product of the voltage and current into digital pulse output, pulse signals into the measurement of kWh counter. This generation of products at the time of measurement of electrical equipment and high demand for basic tariff environment for the development of new meter industry has played an important role in the transition. OEM manufacturers take into account many local low-cost PCB manufacturing process, have adopted this technology.
With the power industry from the traditional management system of the basic rate of shift to market-oriented regulation of competition, driven by the meter measuring the structure of the second change. As power companies began to introduce time-billing system, added automatic meter reading (AMR), micro-controller, radio, LCD, and real-time clock (RTC) and other devices, these devices are integrated into the measurement ASIC (also known as the Analog Front End or AFE), promote the standardization program of multi-chip design in residential meter applications.
Specific application and measurement requirements often require higher design standards, with the power industry needs change and the globalization of design standards, coupled with the design of complex electronic systems integration challenges, improving the access to this industry become a global supplier of high-end threshold, but also greatly reduces the number of professional manufacturers. The increase in the measurement device the increasing importance of basic communication, but also further exacerbated this trend. Of course, not all suppliers around the world are experiencing the transition at the same time.
The advantages of smart grid
When the IC suppliers realize a shorter time in order to satisfy mass production low cost, high complexity, high reliability products require a large number of meters supported by OEM manufacturers, IC suppliers from around 2003, introduced a high degree of dedicated on-chip integrated system (SoC) products. System on a chip integrated AFE, RTC, LCD driver, and MCU, and other common modules, and improved reliability, flexibility and measurement capability, making the OEM manufacturers around the world to develop faster and reliable low-cost meter. Using only single-chip SoC, with the communication module to quickly meet the specific basic requirements of power industry.
The introduction of the concept of the smart grid and power requirements of the continuous improvement of industry standards, smart grid applications need to add more memory, security and communications capabilities, which requires more digital devices integrated circuit, integrated in accordance with Moore's law rising the development of the semiconductor manufacturing process also conforms to the application requirements. This represents the value of semiconductor process development of a classic case, it accelerates changes in the measurement industry.
Whole is greater than some
Part of IC manufacturers can follow to establish their position and integration, this distinction may be very subtle, but important. At first glance, Teridian's metering SoC is the integration of traditional modules, including basic meter. This rapid copy - paste program similar to the separate D / A converter (ADC) or micro-controller suppliers fairly common design. The separation of design is to provide reference designs for specific applications and related procedures, not the chip-level design.
According to market demand, Teridian's patented "single-converter technology" integrates a 21-bit, 2-order -? ADC, seven multiplexed analog inputs and a programmable compute engine (CE), as shown in Figure 1 . This architecture solves the multi-channel data acquisition program of the many problems exist, such as noise and uneven. In the industrial temperature range, the ADC can still maintain the dynamic range of 2000:1, with the best indicator of the industry. 32 CE as the signal processor, hardware standard measurement functions, the system can be upgraded to support new user features.