Interview | The Development Of Smart Meters Also Requires Upgrading Of Communication And Metering Systems

The development of smart meters also needs to upgrade the communication and metering system -- visit Shao Fangjing, performance test engineer of the Measurement Center of the Electric Power Research Institute of Shaanxi Electric Power Company.

In recent years, electric energy metering has experienced a revolution from "function machine" to "intelligent machine", smart meters instead of electronic meters are widely used in thousands of households, and China has basically completed the great leap from manual meter reading to automatic meter reading. However, the revolution in electricity metering does not stop there. "In the next stage, smart meter technology will develop towards enabling communication networks and more advanced metering systems." Recently, Shao Fangjing, a performance test specialist at the measurement center of the Electric Power Research Institute of Shaanxi Electric Power Company, said in an interview with China Power News.

China Power News: In what direction will smart meter technology develop?

Shao Fangjing: There are four main aspects: first, the "dual core" smart meter, the measurement function and management function are separated; Second, modular design; Third, smart energy meters compatible with different communication modules and communication protocols to achieve communication networking and meet the needs of big data transmission; Four is the advanced measuring body AdvancedMeteringInfrastructure (AMI).

At present, smart meters usually adopt functional integration design, and if a certain function of the energy meter fails, it can only be replaced by the whole meter. The development trend of smart meters in the future is to use modular design, different functions are realized by different modules, users can customize different modules according to their own needs, plug and play, automatic identification.

AMI refers to the technology that transmits the client meter data back to the control center using various communication methods, and achieves various functions such as remote data reading, providing, setting and control through two-way communication.

In addition to improving the disadvantages of traditional manual meter reading such as uneconomical, inaccurate and not real-time, AMI can also support a variety of different electricity tariff rates, provide user energy use information and guide spontaneous energy conservation, support transmission signals for user load control. Automatic response to electricity price changes, support fault detection and remote on/off management, improve load forecasting, customer power quality management, etc.

China Power News: In 2015, the National Energy Administration issued the "Smart energy meter function Specification", what is the role of this specification?

Shao Fangjing: For smart meter companies, although the large-scale installation period of smart meters has ended, and the smart meter market tends to be saturated, with the continuous development of smart grid, grid enterprises and users have higher and clearer intelligent demand for energy meters, and the application fields of smart meters are more extensive, such as charging pile metering, smart gas meters, smart water meters, etc. The market development space of smart meters in the future is still very broad.

At present, there is a big gap between China's smart meter products and foreign advanced technology level in communication, monitoring system, standard adoption and so on. Therefore, improving their own technical level has become the key to the survival of enterprises.