Optical watthour meter digitizer

Abstract

As concern about energy conservation and energy-use efficiency increases, a simple and inexpensive instrument that would provide accurate, reliable and high-resolution data on electrical energy usage should find widespread application in research and industrial facilities. An instrument that would also provide one or more outputs compatible with a wide range of digital data acquisition systems would be especially appropriate, since the use of automatic data logging equipment is now common, even in small-scale and low-budget operations. An optical watthour meter digitizer was developed which meets these criteria. Based on the induction-type watthour meter, the digitizer provides an output pulse for a fixed amount of energy use. The digitizer senses the motion of the rotor disc of the meter by optically detecting passage of a nonreflective area painted on the underside of the disc. The passage of such area initiates a logic-compatible output pulse that can be used to measure power or energy usage in a variety of ways. The accuracy of the measurement is determined by the watthour meter. The resolution of the measurement is determined by the K/sub h/ constant (in watthours per revolution) of the meter and the number of equally spaced targets painted on the disc. The resolution of this device can be as small as a fraction of a watthour; the resolution of the manually read register on a watthour meter is typically a fraction of a kilowatthour. Several digitizers were fabricated, bench-tested, and installed in the field for long-term performance testing. All are performing satisfactorily.