New technology for electrical metering monitoring and control instrumentation

Abstract

Presently, individual instruments are available at reasonable costs for metering, monitoring and controlling the use of electrical energy. Many of these instruments have been developed in the last few years and make varying degrees of use of sophisticated electronic components and microprocessor chips. Performance data collected on the use of these instruments have shown that there are substantial energy and cost savings possible from widespread application of these devices. The purpose of this paper is to enumerate briefly some data on the costs and benefits of instruments which allow time of day and demand metering, monitoring of energy use and cost, direct load control and indirect load control. Finally, an integrated instrument is proposed which combines these varied functions into one low cost device to provides cost effective electrical energy conservation.