With the development of science and technology, in China's land area of about 9.6 million square kilometers to realize the door-to-door manual meter reading to the era of smart grid without the need for manpower to read the meter leap.

Previously, every month we can see the shoulder carrying an extension pole magnifier or stairs, holding a thick book of electricity, sweating and even wet clothes meter readers walking along the alleys and households. In many remote areas it was even necessary to trek over the mountains to exceed the meter.

At that time, meter readers were known as the iron rice bowl, which was not a good meal because the work was monotonous and hard, encountered harsh environments, and was difficult and inefficient to read meters.

As electricity is used and then pay, so caused by the phenomenon of arrears of electricity is very serious, private electricity is also a very common phenomenon. Each region's power system scheduling, business, monitoring and control of their own system, the lack of uniformity in the basic data of electricity caused by a serious waste of resources, so power outages in the past is also a particularly normal thing.

It all comes down to the fact that the old meters can only be used to measure electricity usage and the grid can only be used to transmit electricity.

Older meters are called induction single-phase energy meters also known as mechanical single-phase energy meters, which are designed using the principle of electromagnetic induction.

• When the alternating current passes through the voltage coil, an alternating magnetic field is generated in the iron core of the voltage element, and this magnetic field passes through the magnetic return plate extending into the lower part of the aluminum disk to form a magnetic circuit through the aluminum disk and generate eddy currents on the aluminum disk.
• When an alternating current passes through the current coil, it generates an alternating magnetic field in the iron core of the current element, which passes through one end of the core post out of the aluminum disk, and through the other end of the core post into the aluminum disk, forming a closed magnetic field.

The two alternating magnetic fields generated by the voltage and current coils and the resulting eddy currents interact with the magnetic field generated by the brake permanent magnet to produce the braking torque. The magnitude of the braking torque increases as the rotational speed of the aluminum disk increases and is proportional to the rotational speed of the aluminum disk. Only when the braking torque is balanced with the rotating torque, the aluminum disk can rotate at a uniform speed. Driven by the worm and gear, the counter counts and displays the amount of electricity.

Traditional old-fashioned meters are affected by many environmental factors because they are mechanically metered, and the stability and metering accuracy of such meters is relatively poor. The choice of aluminum pieces inside the meter will also produce large power consumption, and there is no way to prevent the act of stealing electricity, and need to read the meter manually on a regular basis.

With the development of microcontrollers and integrated circuits, electronic energy meters have begun to gradually replace the traditional old-fashioned meters.

There is no bulky iron core structure inside the electronic meter, so its weight is very light. Measuring accuracy is improved a lot by means of chip metering and is affected very little by the environment, and power consumption is also much lower because there is no mechanical structure.

Electronic meters still had to be read manually, but their appearance set the stage for the advent of prepaid meters.

A plug-in prepaid meter works on the same principle as an electronic meter, but it adds billing to the electronic meter.

When you use it, you need to bring your IC power purchase card to the power supply department or community to purchase electricity for recharging, and the IC power purchase card with data written on it can be energized by inserting it into the meter.

Plug-in prepaid meters no longer require manual meter reading and will cut off power if the user is in arrears or has abnormal behavior of electricity consumption. Every time the user carries out the operation of recharging, the power purchase system can record the user's power consumption and power consumption behavior. The appearance of prepaid meters greatly reduces the labor cost of manual meter reading in the power sector, and also lays a solid foundation for the emergence of laddered tariffs, smart meters and smart grids.

Smart Grid Era

Smart grid is built on the basis of integrated, high-speed two-way communication network, through advanced sensing and measurement and other technical equipment, to achieve the goal of safe, reliable and economically efficient power grid, which has the characteristics of informatization, digitalization, automation and interaction.

The smart meter removes the card insertion operation of pre-payment, and it has richer collection and metering parameters, and through the LCD screen, it can display the total power consumption, peak and valley power consumption, power consumption, alarm, historical power consumption, real-time power supply, and power supply curve.

Smart meter has a variety of data interfaces, both through infrared communication for manual meter reading, but also through the computer remote automatic meter reading, greatly improving the accuracy of meter reading. It can also help the power supply enterprises to grasp the information of customers' electricity consumption, and obtain the on-site faults and abnormalities at the first time, so as to facilitate timely repair and reduce the time of power outage.

Principle of Smart Meter Remote Reading

Remote meter reading varies in different environments, as shown below:

• Option 1: At present, the more widely used is the power carrier meter, which is connected to the collector through wires, and the collector uploads the data to the remote reading server through GPRS (a bit similar to the power cats in the network).
• Option 2: Large buildings and communities use smart meters with RS485 bus to connect to the network, and the collector is connected to the collector through the RS485 bus, and the collector is directly connected to the remote reading server through the network cable.
• Option 3: Youth apartments, white-collar apartments, serviced apartments using wifi meters, through wifi remote reading server, and of course gprs meters.
• Option 4: IoT smart meter (NB-IoT meter), which connects directly to the remote reading server via NB-IoT network.

Smart meters alone are not enough, you need a smart energy billing system as well

With the changes in the power sales management mode and the demand for power management methods, China has gradually developed three major types of power prepayment systems: integrated circuit card prepayment system, keypad energy meter prepayment system and automatic meter reading system.

Through the electric energy pre-payment system program, you can see that you have to first deposit money through the bank, WeChat, Alipay or grid business hall to the grid company's account to convert the money into electricity, when you successfully pay the bill, the bank servers and the grid's servers will have an agreement between the data transmission, the grid system learns that the amount of data that you recharge will be your recharge amount will be told to the smart meter.

The smart meter is the ultimate performer, it knows how much electricity you have charged, how much electricity you use every moment, it will remind you when it is almost out of power, it will automatically cut off when it is out of power, and it will automatically renew when it is recharged. The data from the smart meter will be exchanged with the grid server without interruption.

summarize

Smart meters make electricity consumption smarter and more rational, but meters occasionally have technical defects, and users must reflect problems to the power company in a timely manner.

Power companies can not simply and roughly installed, but also need to increase efforts to popularize the use of the guide, to avoid the public mistakenly think that smart meters become image engineering and money-sucking tools.

The above personal opinion, welcome to criticize and correct.

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What about the old days when meters needed to be read, and how smart meters are now controlled remotely?

With the development of chip manufacturing and IoT technology, many of life's metering and charging devices have changed. Electricity meters, water meters, gas meters and heating meters have all realized remote data collection and control. This not only greatly saves labor, but also more accurate data processing and statistics.

Classification and Working Principle of Electricity Meter

• Mechanical Meters
  

The early use of purely mechanical meters, also called induction meters. It uses the principle of electromagnetic induction to collect current and voltage, and drives the counting through the transmission of mechanical gears to finally display the electricity consumption. Its internal mainly consists of current coil, voltage coil, aluminum disk, permanent magnet, mechanical counting device, terminals and other parts. The voltage coil is connected in parallel to the load circuit, the number of turns of this coil is more and the wire diameter is fine; the current coil is connected in series to the load circuit, the number of turns of its coil is very small and the wire diameter is thick. The magnetic flux generated by these two coils acts together on the aluminum disk. Due to the role of these two coils, it will make the aluminum disk to produce eddy currents, so that the aluminum disk rotation, under the damping effect of permanent magnets, will make the aluminum disk rotate at a constant speed, driven by the worm and gears, so that the counting device counts and displays the amount of electricity.

Inductive meters use mechanical devices for metering, and the mechanical devices will be affected by environmental factors (such as temperature). Therefore, the stability and metering accuracy of this type of meter is relatively poor, and there will be differences in magnetic circuit and mechanical structure of each meter in the factory, so it is necessary to add some compensation measures, and after a long time of transportation and vibration, it is also necessary to carry out tuning.

This kind of meter needs to drive the rotation of the aluminum piece in the measurement, which produces a large power consumption, and can not prevent the theft of electricity and other abnormal use behavior, the need for regular manual meter reading, which will also greatly increase the workload and the time of electricity consumption statistics. So this kind of meter has basically been eliminated.

• electronic meter
  

Electronic meters are a type of meter that appeared after inductive meters, which are more compact and lighter in weight. The metering of electronic meters still requires the detection of voltage and current. Voltage is generally detected by means of a resistor divider, and current is detected by means of a sampling resistor, so that the collected load current is converted into voltage by means of the resistor. The metering of this type of meter does not use the mechanical structure of the aluminum disk, but the voltage and current sampling signal input to the special metering chip. The metering chip will multiply the input voltage and current signals and convert them into pulse signals that are proportional to the product. The display part of the power consumption still uses a mechanical wheel, unlike the induction meter, which uses an electromagnetic counting device, and the pulse output from the metering chip drives the mechanical device in the power consumption display part to display the final power consumption.

Compared with inductive meters, electronic meters have improved metering accuracy and are less affected by the environment, are easy to calibrate, are accurate and will not be affected by vibration during transportation, and because of the use of chip metering, their power consumption is also reduced, and they can be added to the detection of abnormal use such as electricity theft. Although this type of meter is superior to inductive meters in many ways, it still requires manual meter reading to count electricity consumption.

• Plug-in prepaid meters
  

The measurement and power display functions and principles of plug-in prepaid meters are basically the same as those of electronic meters, but the difference is that it has added the fee-control function on the basis of ordinary electronic meters. When it is in use, it is necessary to use IC card to carry out the operation of "pre-charge", which is generally operated by the power supply department or community power supply management department.

This kind of meter, compared with the ordinary electronic representative, can effectively control the user's electricity consumption behavior, such as the power cut-off in case of arrears, the power cut-off control of abnormal behavior of electricity consumption and so on, due to the addition of the pre-payment fee control system. Due to the pre-payment method, there is no need for manual meter reading, and when the user carries out the recharge operation of the card reader, the data in the meter will be uploaded to the recharge operation platform through the IC card, so that the user's electricity consumption and electricity consumption behavior can be counted.

With the prepaid meters saving the trouble of manual meter reading, but the pre-charge still requires manual operation, and for security reasons, this top-up operation can only be carried out through the authorized department, so there will still be inconvenience in use.

• Intelligent Remote Meter
  

This kind of meter is the commonly used meter nowadays, which removes the card insertion operation for prepayment. Compared with ordinary electronic meters and plug-in card meters, its collection and measurement parameters are more enriched, and it can display a variety of measurement information through the LCD, such as total power consumption, peak and valley power consumption, power consumption and so on. In addition to displaying local information through the LCD screen, smart meters can also be used for manual meter reading through infrared communication and remote meter reading through data interface.

There are many kinds of data remote transmission and control signal transmission methods for smart meters, such as store power carrier wave, public network transmission, etc. The latter is mostly used and relatively stable. The data collection interface of the meter is generally RS485, and the meters in a small area (such as a unit) will be connected via RS485 according to the division of the area. The data collected and processed by the data concentrator for the meters in the region, and through the public network (such as GPRS) will be uploaded to the power department's server, by the server backend software to process and analyze the data, in addition to the supervision of the power department, it will also be the power consumption and the cost of information through the information and so on, pushed to the user. In addition to the remote collection of power consumption information, the meter can also supervise and control the power consumption behavior. When abnormal power consumption behavior occurs, the power can be cut off by remote control and the background software will send out reminders to notify the management department.

The use of smart meters not only eliminates the workload of manual meter reading and pre-charge, but also realizes the adoption of electricity consumption data, statistics, and the convenience of bill payment. Without leaving home, you can check the situation of electricity consumption and make payment through cell phone. In life, not only the electric meter realizes intelligent, gas, heating, water meter also realizes intelligent collection and control. It is believed that with the continuous development of intelligent control and Internet of Things technology, people's lives will become more and more convenient and efficient.

The traditional meter in the electricity management process requires specialized staff to read the meter, so to centralize the management of the meter first of all to carry out the intelligent transformation of the meter, that is, the formation of the currentsmart meter。

what is calledintellectualizeIt is the meter that has an intelligent chip core through the application of computer technology and communication technology, and has some main functions such as measuring the amount, time and cost of electricity.

Smart Meter Application Status

Structurally, intelligent meters in China can be divided into two main categories, one is theElectromechanical metersThe other isFully electronic meters。

Electromechanical MetersThis is to add some specific mechanical parts on top of the original meter so that the meter can fulfill the simple intelligent requirements, which not only reduces the cost of transformation, but also has the advantage of easy installation.

Fully electronic metersThe choice of microcontroller technology and specialized measurement methods to integrated circuits, the accuracy of the performance is very good, but also effectively avoid the situation of stolen electricity, while the meter itself has a high degree of reliability because of its low power consumption.

How Smart Meters Work

Smart Meter Reading SystemIt is actually an information acquisition and processing system thatWorking PrincipleIt is the use of a computer network to automatically record and collect information on the use of electricity, which in turn is centralized.

Its main functions at work include the collection and processing of information.Remote control and monitoring, analysis and prediction of line loss conditions, and alarms when hazards are detected.

Its main structure can be divided into three parts, theInformation collection component，information transmission componentas well asInformation processing component, several components combine with each other to function as a system.

The questioner mentionedRemote control methodThe main part involved is the information transmission part, i.e. the communication channel, which is the channel that transmits the collected data to the management system. For the time being, the types of communication channels used includeGPRS、CDMA、PSTNand other information transfer platforms, as technology evolves.fiber opticsIt has also been gradually applied, and has been rapidly developed with the advantages of low energy consumption, long communication distance and long service life.

Based on the above communication channel, the power system can realize the remote control and monitoring of the user's smart meter, and realize the collection and centralized management of the user's power consumption related information.

[1] GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is a wireless packet-switching technology based on the GSM system that provides end-to-end, wide-area wireless IP connectivity.

[2] CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), or Code Division Multiple Access, is a multiple access communication that utilizes code sequence correlation.

[3] PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), i.e., Public Switched Telephone Network, a commonly used old-fashioned telephone system, i.e., the telephone network commonly used in our daily life.

Hello friends, I am electronic and industrial control technology, I come to answer this question. With the development of technology, more and more new technologies are applied in all aspects of life, now not only is the meter metering charges are remote control, even the home of the water bill, gas bill, etc. have been implemented to remotely monitor, and the cost of the bank deduction. Today we talk about how the current smart meter is remote control.

Reasons why meters used to need to be read

I still remember very clearly after hours at home with a rotating aluminum plate induction power meter, the more appliances open home open that aluminum plate turns faster, every month to the end of the electrician master to the home to the meter on the number of transcription in the book, through a pass after calculating the cost of electricity even out of the month. Later on, I chose to go to school to learn the ins and outs of the meter's working process because I majored in electricity.

For the induction system power meter it is by the driving element to generate the rotating torque to drive the aluminum disk rotation, the number of revolutions of the aluminum disk by the calculation of the number of kilowatt hours of electricity to count the number of institutions, then the induction system power meter will eventually through the counter will eventually show the amount of electricity used by the family, due to the limitations of the previous technology power meter can only display the data and can not be transmitted over long distances, it is necessary to manually read the meter.

With the development of technology, at the beginning of this century the power meter has another step forward, we all generally use the electronic power meter. The benefits of this electronic meter is high sensitivity, so the user's feeling is to change the electronic meter seems to be more than the inductive meter run degrees, there is a point is to use the electronic meter to reduce the energy consumption of the meter itself, when I was a child to see the master electrician to read the meter to the last to be more than 2 degrees of 3-3 degrees of electricity, which may be due to the inductive meter of its own consumption of power for the sake of the big one!

Electronic energy meters with pre-payment function

Electronic power meter is more advanced with prepaid (IC card) power meter, this table includes two functional systems, one is the measurement system, it is a voltage divider to complete the voltage sampling, and then by the sampling resistor to complete the current sampling. Finally, the sampled voltage and current signals are sent to the multiplier to complete the conversion of power signals. The converted power signal is driven by the stepper motor to drive the meter and generate pulse signals into another system, which is the microcontroller system. The microcontroller system mainly manages the initial value of the meter, the name of the consumer and other information, and has the ability to store and calculate. So we buy electricity from the power supply department, the amount of electricity purchased by the sales motor "written" to the card inside, after returning home to insert the card into the meter after the card information is transmitted to the meter, if the amount of electricity purchased run out of power meter relay will take the initiative to disconnect the home's power supply line, you have to re-buy electricity.

Control process of a fee-controlled smart meter with remote control function

With the development of technology, especially in recent years the popularization of network technology is now home to the gas meter, water meter and electricity meter, etc. are used in the network of network technology. Coupled with the current power meter than the electronic power meter in the previous function of the meter added many new features, especially to meet the needs of the network communication meter now have infrared communication interface, RS485 data communication interface and carrier wave communication interface and other network interfaces, in the DL/T645 common communication protocol can support communication remote pull-closing control.

Therefore, through the network technology plus this set of power measurement, cost control, monitoring and other functions in one of the intelligent measurement meter, the combination of the two through the RS485 communication and far-infrared communication, etc. can be the user's power consumption and power information data collection and storage and then through the network to the power supply department of the remote prepaid energy management system for the implementation of monitoring and management.

Perspectives on Automatic Meter Reading System for Wireless Networks

With the high degree of integration of "5G" technology, artificial intelligence (AI) technology and Internet of Things (IoT) technology, I believe that there is a possibility of further improvement in intelligent meter reading technology in the future. For example, the use of wireless network sensors to integrate the management system of the power supply management department, remote data transmission network and on-site meter reading network, the system can be monitored in real time through the wireless network, and it can also realize the function of pre-charging and under-charging control. The above is my answer to this question. Welcome friends to participate in the discussion, stay tuned!Electronics and industrial control technology, thanks for the kudos.

I am engaged in the power industry, quite understand, now the degree of intelligence of the power grid is very high, large to unmanned substations, robot-guarded substations, distribution network automation system. Small to the household meter collection system, now the smart meter with communication interface, each meter box is equipped with a set of meter, all the meter's communication line to the set of meter, the set of reading up to install GPRS cell phone card, wireless communication to the power supply company set of the total station, the meter's data will be passed on. The meter also has 4 shaking functions, telemetry, telecommunication, shaking control and shaking adjustment. Electricity bill arrears can be automatically shut down, renewals can be automatically restored. We pay attention to the WeChat public number of the power grid of the province we are in through the cell phone, and enter the household number to check the daily electricity consumption, and also compare the electricity consumption of the same period last year, etc. The function is very powerful and the information is very accurate!

Previously, the meter needs to read the income, and with the continuous development of science and technology, the meter is also upgraded from the original mechanical meter to a smart meter, so now the meter is how to realize the remote control, for the public without knowledge of electricians, it is indeed a very advanced product.

In fact, at present the ordinary smart meter is divided into two kinds, the installation of rental housing in various regions to use the meter, not through the Internet to pay their own bills, you need to pay the bill through the landlord, this kind of smart meter is in fact more than a smart memory billing board; tenants in the use of household appliances, the meter will be in accordance with the electrical equipment produced, the current began to billing, the tenant to use the finished rechargeable tariffs, the meter in which the After the tenant has finished using the rechargeable electricity, the tripping signal in the meter actively sends out power cuts, this kind of meter disadvantages landlords can adjust the billing ratio at will (basically are rental housing and individual neighborhoods, will use this kind of secondary smart meter).

And our ordinary household use, the national grid installed meters, power purchase and civilian secondary ordinary smart meters, or a big gap, the first generation need to insert a card (IC card), although you can pay the bill through the Internet, but there is no remote writing module, the residents of the purchase of electricity must be to the purchase of electricity can be charged on the equipment in the power purchase of electricity, in the first generation of meters used in our homes to insert a card to complete The second generation does not need to insert the card in the power purchase office, enter the power purchase number can be real-time charging directly to the home meter, but also through the Internet online charging, because the second generation of smart meters, retrofitted with remote reception and read-write module.

Smart meters installed by the national grid, billing the same way are through the current generated by household appliances billing, and billing records taken, the traditional smart meter itself records, and the meter collected data, into analog digital signals to the power bureau, a combination of two ways of billing.

In summary: now the smart meter, is relying on the national power grid unique analog signal, the meter transmit real-time data on electricity consumption of residents, through the power grid in the network to transmit the signal to the real-time receiving terminal of the Electricity Bureau, the received signal into a digital signal, to the Electricity Bureau computer control, so as to realize the real-time monitoring real-time billing, real-time remote control (the smart meter effectively prevents the individual residents of the theft of electricity) (Smart meter effectively prevents individual residents from stealing electricity).

In the past, the electricity meter was read manually. Nowadays, the meter it is managed by information technology. Each meter has a new product. It is similar to a person's ID card. This chip records the parameters of the meter. It is collected directly to the power supply department through the network. Reduced labor costs. Reduces errors.

Ten years ago the meter are still mechanical meter, need to manually read the bottom of the meter to calculate the amount of electricity and electricity costs, now only need to read the meter remotely through the computer, the amount of electricity and the calculation of electricity costs in the power meter directly realize. So how is the smart meter realized?

power meter

Energy meters can be categorized into mechanical (inductive) energy meters and electronic energy meters.

• Mechanical Energy Meters

Mechanical energy meters utilize the principle of electromagnetic induction. (I won't go into detail on the exact principle.)

This type of meter can only measure electrical energy and has a small meter capacity and is not very accurate.

• Electronic Energy Meter

A simple electronic energy meter is relatively more versatile and accurate than a mechanical meter.

Due to the rapid development of technology, simple electronic energy meters have not yet been widely used, and fee-controlled meters have become popular.

• Fee-controlled energy meter

Fee-controlled energy meters are based on the measurement of electrical energy, plus data storage, transmission, interaction and the calculation of power tariffs and other functions.

How to control a fee-controlled energy meter

Fee control meter can be divided into local fee control and remote fee control meter, the function is actually similar, just in some data calculation and transmission is different.

There is a carrier module in the fee-control table, which transmits data through power line carrier communication. The total concentrator collects all the stored data in the fee-control table as needed, and the concentrator then transmits it to the system that collects the data through GPRS signals.

Transmission is mutual, and the system that collects the data can also issue commands to the meter, such as a blackout command。

Blackout command: When you owe money, the system platform will send down to the concentrator blackout command, the concentrator will then transmit it to the fee control meter, the fee control meter receives the command and then acts to disconnect the switch.

Paying bills and checking electricity bills is now just on the app on your phone.

This development is more conducive to our lives, more convenient to pay bills, clearer electricity bill inquiries, and more secure.

Technology is developing, all kinds of electronic equipment is updated every year, more efficient and convenient, more powerful. I don't know what the meter will be like in ten years, looking forward to it!

(Part of the picture from the network, infringement of the deletion)

I'm a Rambler 2020 and love learning about appliances and electricity, so I hope my answer helps!

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Nowadays, there are chips inside the smart meter, which can realize remote monitoring of the meter, the application of this technology is the inevitable result of the development of science and technology, the user if the meter is tampered with seconds to be found, thus providing a safeguard measure for the safe operation of the meter.

Nowadays, smart meters have high metering accuracy, and the metering between households does not interfere with each other. The advantages of centralized installation and centralized management. Smart meters are usually applied in the electric energy management system, which is an integrated system including computers, communication managers, printers and other equipment. The system is mainly divided into three layers, the bottom layer is the smart meter. The middle layer is the communication management machine, and the upper layer is the client pc, server and related peripherals (such as printers, SMS cats, etc.), he can implement remote monitoring through the computer to implement remote settings remote view of the work status, violation records and remote tap-closing, meter reading, time and space, negative space, fee control and other functions.