Traditional Meter Research Articles

Cryptoanalysis and improvement of smart prepayment meter protocol in standard Q/GDW 365

IC card prepayment meter has gradually replaced the traditional electricity meter which is operated and controlled by human resources, due to its convenience, efficiency and security. The electricity of user is automatically controlled by the interactions between the meter and user card. In 2009, State Grid Corporation of China worked out the series of standards for smart electricity meters. Q/GDW 365 is one of these standards which explain the security techniques of information interchanges authentication specification for smart electricity meters. The standard describes the processes of user establishing an account, recharging and using the electricity, user closing an account. We analyse the security of this standard and find that the standard suffers from theft of electricity as the user card may be analysed by side-channel attacks. We give out an improved protocol to this problem, and extensive analysis shows that our protocol can resist the side-channel attacks.

Research on the Utilization of Smart Meters’ Information under the Background of Smart Grid

Smart meters are developed gradually from the traditional power meters, which is an important terminal in the smart grid. It is the foundation of information integration, analysis, optimization and information expression, and undertakes the task to data acquisition, measurement and transmission. This paper reviews the development and application of smart meters, analysis the technical requirements, function of smart meter, and summarizes the benefit of smart meters’ application. It can be concluded that the large-scale use of smart meters will fully reflected energy conservation, efficiency, and safety of the smart grid.

A New Method for Calibrating Digi-Data Input Power Meter

Recently, China is developing smart grid with great strength, more and more digital substations will be built, therefore, it is time for thinking of the accuracy of the new electric energy metering devices. But the new electric energy metering devices are different from the traditional meters by using Digi-Data interface instead of voltage and current interface, requiring a new method of testing error. By equivalently transforming electric power from analog to digital, we design a special electric power standard with digital-data-interface according to IEC61850. Based on the special electric power standard, this article introduces a new method for calibrating digi-data input power meter.

A capacity-increasing mechanism in freeway traffic

A reason is unveiled for the time-varying pattern in discharge flow that is commonly observed at freeway bottlenecks. We hypothesize that four known effects in freeway traffic can interact upstream of a bottleneck in ways that trigger periodic bursts in its discharge flow. Repeated observations of a 3-km freeway stretch support the hypothesis. Controlled experiments show that the capacity-increasing mechanism can be favorably modulated by metering the site’s on-ramps in an unconventional manner. The unconventional strategy repeatedly produced higher average discharge flows and shorter on-ramp queues than did a more traditional metering policy.

Design and Development of GSM based Energy Meter

Traditional metering method for retrieving the energy data is not convenient and the cost of the data logging systems is high. So this paper presents of design and development of Automatic meter reading (AMR) system. AMR system is a boom for remote monitoring and control domestic energy meter. AMR system give the information of meter reading, power cut, total load used, power disconnect and tempering on request or regularly in particular interval through SMS. This information is being sent and received by concerned energy Provider Company with the help of Global system for mobile communication (GSM) network. Energy provider receives the meter reading within a second without visiting person. AMR minimize the number of traditional visits required by employs of energy Provider Company. This system not only reduces the labor cost but also increase meter reading accuracy and save hugs amount of time. Key term: Short message service (SMS), Automatic meter reading (AMR), Energy meter, Energy provider company, GSM.

Research on Method of Building Energy Conservation Based on Infrared Imaging Measurement

With the deepening of the energy conservation of the building, energy saving from the original design of building energy-saving gradually turned to the field detection and completion acceptance, which requires a corresponding energy-efficient means of detection. With the development of infrared technology, the combination of infrared technology and detection methods of building energy-saving, to further promote the development of building energy efficiency testing work. Compared to the traditional heat flow meter or hot-box method, infrared thermal imaging method has no effect on the measured object, detecting the surface temperature of quick reaction speed, accompanying with wide temperature range and high precision, is widely used in various fields of testing work, which has been particularly prominent in the thermal defect detection. In this paper, the method of infrared thermography is used to confirm whether the thermal defects exist in energy-saving construction or not. Testing results show that infrared thermography can accurately reflect the temperature distribution of building wall surface. Infrared thermal imaging to detect the building surface's energy efficiency, which is providing efficient and accurate means of detection for the evaluation of the building energy efficiency. This is to help carry out a comprehensive building energy-saving testing.

Design of the Digital Phase Meter with GPIB Interface Based on FPGA

Comparing with the traditional phase meter, the design of digital phase meter with GPIB interface based on FPGA have some advantages, such as the high date transmission rate, the simple circuit, short design cycle and the lower price. The principle of this design meets with the standard of IEEE488.2 and use Verilog HDL language to design every interface. Then compile simulate it in Quartus II. Finally download it to the FPGA experiment board to realize every function. It makes the date transmission more stable and reliable through the design of GPIB interface

Design of Wireless Network Intelligent Gas Meter

According to gas meter, including the traditional mechanical meter, IC card meter ,has the drawbacks of meter reading inconvenience and no control table function, The design of a intelligent network gas meter has the wireless transceiver function, adopted the single-chip radio frequency transceiver chip CC2500, not only simplify the meter reading process, and promote the automatic management of gas company. The wireless network intelligent gas meter system has stable performance, low power consumption, reliable communications, good anti-jamming performance.

Electricity provision with intermittent sources of energy

We analyze the interaction between a reliable source of electricity production and intermittent sources such as wind or solar power. We first characterize the optimal energy mix, emphasizing the availability of the intermittent source as a major parameter for the optimal investment in capacity. We then analyze decentralization through competitive market mechanisms. We show that decentralizing the efficient energy mix requires electricity to be priced contingently on the availability of the intermittent source. By contrast, traditional meters impose uniform pricing, which distorts the optimal mix of energy sources. Decentralizing the efficient energy mix with uniform prices requires either cross-subsidies from the intermittent source to the reliable source of energy or structural integration of the two types of technology.

Android based Measurement System with Optical Character Recognition

Across the world, electric utilities are deploying smart meters also known as AMI (Automated Metering Infrastructure) to their residential customers and industrial applications. Smart meters provide two-way digital communications between the utility and the customer. Thus, enabling, customer energy management and demand response via both information and rate programs. Utility operational advantages such as outage detection and management, remote meter reading, and remote customer connections are possible by smart meters. Smart meter deployment causes controversies regarding mainly health, privacy and cost. Traditional measurement system met with lot of difficulties in terms of estimated billing and energy wastage. A measurement system lying in between Smart meters and traditional meter reading system is proposed here. Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It is an open-source development platform for creating mobile applications. This application contains OCR (Optical Character Recognition), barcode reader and data transfer applications. A prototype measuring system using Android hand held device is developed. Meter Identity and reading is two important parameters for any measurement system. These two parameters are captured and stored in android data base for future analysis. The consumer data base and meter readings can be exported to PC. A SQlite(Structured Queried Language) data base also created in the PC. Data base can be converted in to CSV (Comma Separated Values) files and can be exported to android device. OCR is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text.

Performance Evaluations on UAV-Aided Automated Meter Reading

This paper presents a novel approach of using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for automated meter reading (AMR) applications in rural areas where there are a few consumers scattered across a wide area. Compared to traditional meter reading systems, the use of UAVs for AMR brings several advantages, such as low cost operation, flexibility and online system management. In this paper, the advantages of integrating an Inertial Navigation System (INS) and a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver for a robust localization and navigation system for automated meter reading applications are investigated. In addition, the results of field tests related to the proposed navigation and localization system, and experimental studies on sensor node lifetime, are given to prove the effectiveness of the proposed system. The proposed system can be used by utility providers to extend or improve their services.

The role of the Smart meters in the energy management systems

We can state that the replacement of the traditional meters by smart meters is an unstoppable process all over the world. This is a hard duty of the utilities but also a great opportunity for the energy traders, distributors and users, too. It is difficult to reach the energy consciousness of the public institutions and the households because of the lack of special energy management knowledge. Also the rare energy data feed-back does not allow the control of consumption. The intelligent meters enable the development of a remote-energy management system that helps the energy user decrease the energy costs and also the amount of the used energy. We analyzed the energy management activity and we show that the smart meters make a good base for the remotely deployed energy management function. The smart meters have closely on-line communication to a remote center. The frequent data provided by the meters can be processed only automatically. We recommend a narrow functionality for the central energy monitoring application. By enlarging the circle the managed energy, the efficiency of the total energy applications and the sustainability can be raised.

Anonymous Authentication for Smart Grid Communications

The smart grid is a network of computers and power infrastructures that monitor and manage energy usage and uses intelligent transmission and distribution networks to deliver electricity for improving the electric system’s reliability and efficiency. With grid controls, energy transmission management could be enhanced and resilience to control-system failures would be increased. Processing chips and storage units have been embedded into traditional electricity meters, so that they are capable of performing smart functions, called smart meters. Then, smart meters communicate with electrical appliances at home as well as the generation and management facilities at the power companies. Although deploying the smart grid has numerous social and technical benefits, several security and privacy concerns arise. Attackers might compromise smart meters, eavesdrop the communication, or hack into the power company’s database, to access power consumption data of the victim, from which they learn about the victim’s daily activities. Recently, various security and privacy vulnerabilities and threats have been studied in the research literature, however, most of the problems remain yet to be addressed. Therefore, it is crucial to design secure smart grid communication protocols that could prevent all possible security vulnerabilities. In this paper, we propose an anonymous authentication protocol for securing communication among various smart meters of the smart grid. The proposed protocol can achieve key agreement between smart meters and fully protect user privacy with low computation overhead. In addition, the analysis shows that the proposed protocol can satisfy the desirable security requirements and resist several notorious attacks.

Comment: If you ask me

Energy companies should use technology to rebuild broken relationships with their customers. By 2020 the government wants every home in Great Britain to have a smart meter. For the uninitiated, smart meters are just like traditional energy meters. What makes them 'smart' is that they can communicate with the grid, providing energy suppliers with accurate information on a household's energy consumption at regular intervals.

The Application and the Driver Design of Double Axis Step-Drive Electromotor in the Motorcycle Meter

The traditional motorcycle meters are driven by the separate motors, these devices are simple and easy to be controlled, stable performance, but dial space has not been fully utilized. This paper introduces the double index show of motorcycle speed and speed，focus on analysis of dual-axis stepper motor driven connections, drive mode and the driver circuit design. The results of experiment and application shows that the coaxial two-pointer motorcycle display instrument has good repeatability, good linear scale, fast response, no jitter, high reliability and relatively small size and many other advantages, instrumentation stepper motor driver with dual-axis motor instrument design meet the relevant requirements of motorcycle meter, can be easily to achieve motor servo system driven synchronous control of double axis step-drive electromotor.

Next‐Generation AMR Optimizes Operations and Educates Customers

This article begins with a listing of automated meter reading (AMR) benefits over traditional meter reading, and goes on to present the Long Beach Water Department's AMR program as an example of a successful automated meter reading program. The utility implemented a fixed‐network AMR system that operates as a mesh network, and includes a basic Web interface to view data in real‐time that allows the utility to set options for generating notifications and alerts.

Measurement of heat input in complex wave form welding

Heat input is an essential variable in many codes and industry specifications due to the relationship between heat input and the mechanical properties of a weldment. However, the current and voltage values displayed by many welding power sources or traditional hand-held meters often do not reflect the energy input to a weld with pulsing or other modern welding waveforms.Modern welding waveforms are often not symmetric. They operate on inductive loads, contain high frequency harmonics and are not repetitive. Traditional methods of calculating heat input involve the measuring of either average or RMS voltage and average or RMS current. While traditional methods produce relatively consistent results with high energy processes, such as traditional spray arc, the results become less consistent or accurate with short arc and pulse modes due to the continually changing output of the machine.This work identifies modern waveforms and describes the means for accurately measuring the energy input into a weld. This measurement system lays a foundation which code bodies may use to enable a continued correlation between heat input and the mechanical properties of a weldment, and suggests a method that allows previously qualified procedures to use this measurement system.

Signatures and Methods for the Automated Nondestructive Assay of ${\rm UF}_{6}$ Cylinders at Uranium Enrichment Plants

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors currently perform periodic inspections at uranium enrichment plants to verify UF6 cylinder enrichment declarations. Measurements are typically performed with handheld high-resolution sensors on a sampling of cylinders taken to be representative of the facility's entire cylinder inventory. These measurements are time-consuming, expensive, and assay only a small fraction of the total cylinder volume. An automated nondestructive assay system capable of providing enrichment measurements over the full volume of the cylinder could improve upon current verification practices in terms of manpower and assay accuracy. The 185-keV emission from U-235 is utilized in today's cylinder measurements, but augmenting this “traditional” signature with more-penetrating “non-traditional” signatures could help to achieve full-volume assay in an automated system. This paper describes the study of non-traditional signatures that include neutrons produced by F-19 (α, n) reactions (spawned primarily from U-234 alpha emission) and the high-energy gamma rays (extending up to 8 MeV) induced by those neutrons when they interact in the cylinder wall and nearby materials. The potential of these non-traditional signatures and assay methods for automated cylinder verification is explored using field measurements on a small population of cylinders ranging from 2.0% to 5% in U-235 enrichment. The standard deviation of the non-traditional high-energy gamma-ray assay approach was 4.7% relative to the declared cylinder enrichments; the standard deviation of the traditional enrichment meter approach using a well-collimated high-resolution spectrometer was 4.3%. The prospect of using the non-traditional high-energy gamma-ray signature in concert with the traditional 185-keV signature to reduce the uncertainty of automated cylinder assay is discussed.

Numerical Simulation of V-cone Flow Meter in Product Oil Pipeline of Batch Transportation

For product oil pipeline of batch transportation, this article describes the application of a V-cone flow meter in flow rate calculation of mixing oil in a pipeline, analyzes the velocity distribution in the internal flow field of a pipeline, obtains the qualitative relationship between the discharge coefficient of a V-cone flow meter and Reynolds number of mixing oil, and obtains the variation law of skin friction coefficient on the surface of the pipeline. The results show that a V-cone flow meter can overcome the shortcomings of a traditional flow meter. A V-cone flow meter can be used to measure the flow rate of a mixing oil section.

Design of Multi-User Electric Power Management Device

The current consumption method of Electric Power Industry is “electricity consumption first, paying for it later”. The trend of consumption method is Pre-order Electricity. If we adopt the Pre-order Electricity System, we need to replace Traditional Energy Meter with Prepayment Energy Meter. But this alteration is costly. And the alarm action of Prepayment Energy Meter are bells and alarm lamp, users can not receive alarm information timely. In this paper, we present the design of Multi-user Electric Power Management Device. The device uses TMS320F2812 as CPU, with peripheral devices such as mobile phone communication module MC55, so the device supports remote operation and sends alarm information via SMS, it also can communicate with the master station by GPRS. The device can be seamlessly integrated into the existing power system in order to read meter, achieve billing and Pre-order Electricity functions. In addition, the device has the Harmonic Measurement function, so it is a high cost-effective application.