The massive power outages last year in the US and Canada, the energy crisis in California, and the rising energy costs worldwide have further underscored the urgent need for more effective monitoring, control and conservation of power.
Electric utility companies are locked in an increasingly competitive battle even as peak load costs rise and customers look for significant improvement in services at a lower cost.
Against this backdrop, automated meter reading (AMR) is a technology that assumes added significance. AMR is the remote collection of consumption data from customers' utility meters. Not only does it provide utility-service companies the opportunity to reduce data-collection costs, but also enables them to offer value-added services such as accurate realtime customer usage monitoring, load-management services, meter management and Web-based energy-information services.
Solutions
There are various methods for communicating between the meters and the utility site, such as: radio frequency, power-line carrier, telephony, Internet and satellite communications technology. The most popular method is based on RF technology. RF-based wireless AMR systems offer simplified installation and operation without the need for any complicated wiring.
RF Monolithics provides one of the lowest power RF transceiver solutions in the industry and this solution is ideally suited for AMR applications. RFM's ultra low-power RF transceivers, receivers and transmitters can support 12-15 years of battery life and are currently being used in new AMR systems as well as in retrofit water, gas and electric meters.
RFM's ASH radio technology in the Virtual Wire is based on the company's proprietary 'amplified sequenced hybrid' architecture that does not require the current-hungry UHF synthesizers used in other AMR radio technologies. As such, the ASH radios require only a half to a fifth of the receiver current used by other AMR radio technologies. RFM's ASH radio products integrate an RF IC with RFM's SAW filtering and frequency control devices in a single, self-shielding hybrid package, thus greatly reducing the need for external components. This simplifies and speeds up the Wireless AMR's RF design cycle. No external RF filters, IF filters, resonators or crystals are required and all critical interconnections between the IC, filtering and frequency control devices are integrated.
Future AMR trends
More utilities will gradually look towards the integration of electric, water and gas AMR systems. With a single controller/interface the integrated system will drastically reduce redundant costs and make shared use of the communications technology. AMR is also well suited to potentially further expand into the home automation market, where a single wireless control interface can centrally manage various home devices such as the utility meters, major appliances, light switches, A/C thermostat, etc. Integration of AMR into home automation systems will also promote conservation of energy as consumers will be able to adopt a more 'rate-dependent' approach thus lowering electricity expenses.
Future communication trends for AMR include systems based on low-power wireless mesh networking. The introduction of Wireless Mesh technology to AMR took place back in the late 1990s, but the advent of extremely low-power radios such as RFM's solution and the growing energy crisis will propel such systems to the forefront. Mesh networked AMR systems will be based on ultra low power, low cost, realtime, self-configuring and self-healing wireless sensor networks.
RFM recently introduced the Module Product Line, which combines ASH radio technology with low current microcontrollers, battery-conserving communication protocol methods and efficient miniature antennas. By using an integrated design approach that encompasses all aspects of a low-power radio link, RFM's radio modules are highly optimised with respect to superior RF link performance and very long battery life. RFM's ultra low-power ASH radio products and integrated modules are ideally suited for mesh-networked AMR systems.
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