Power Measurement's Comments on California Direct Access Meter and Data Communication Standard

  

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Jason Sheppard, B.Eng.
Marketing Engineer, Revenue Metering Business Unit
2195 Keating Cross Rd, Saanichton, B.C.
Canada, V8M 2A5
PH:     250-652-7100 Ext: 7535
FAX:   250-652-0411
mailto:jason_sheppard@pml.com
http://pml.com/home/pml
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PMLs~CPUC~submission.doc

Power Measurement Comments on 
California Direct Access Meter and
Data Communication Standard

Introduction

Power Measurement believes there are four key issues that need to be addressed in order to ensure a standard that is open, allows for growth and future development, fosters competition, and maximizes customer choice.  These issues are:  communications architecture, power quality and reliability monitoring and the need to support more complex data types, independent NRTL laboratory certification of meter compliance with national accuracy and safety standards, and unrestricted meter packaging.
Communications

Currently there is no regulated communications standard or industry communications standard for meters and metering software.  Accordingly, the CPUC is attempting to define a common standard for all devices that will communicate over a network.
This communications architecture should be based on open protocols that are published and not restricted by licenses.
To best allow for growth, information exchange, and future enhancement, the architecture should follow mass market information technologies rather than specialized Utility standards.  This will allow for leverage off Internet technologies and the economies of scale offered by the computer and consumer electronic markets.
TCP/IP is the logical choice as it is an open standard that is far and away the most prevalent protocol and fastest growing protocol for Ethernet and Internet communications.  This will facilitate information exchange with customers and third party software packages using industry standard hardware, software, and application programming interfaces.  It can also be supported over virtually all physical communications media including telephone lines.
In the short term the use of vendor specific communication protocols is probably unavoidable.  However, it should be a mandatory requirement that only "open" protocols that are publicly documented and which can be freely used by any party be permitted for "open access" use.
Additionally, the communications protocol to the end devices must not preclude the transfer of complex data types.  Many billing meters today need only transfer simple data types for energy and demand with extraction of this information through manual readings, handheld devices, or communications.  These data types and mechanisms need to be supported.  However, billing meters with more sophisticated capabilities are already in use by some major utilities at important interchange points and major customer sites.  These capabilities include disturbance waveform recording, transient recording, sequence of event logs, harmonics, and symmetrical components.  As technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace, data types will only become more complex.  The meters will become more advanced, communications bandwidths will increase, communication access will be more pervasive if not all encompassing, and communications costs will come down.  The architecture chosen must not preclude these developments.
Proposals such as the ANSI C12.19 for common data formats for electricity, gas, and water meters should be carefully analyzed to ensure they do not preclude future developments and enhancements.  Introducing artificial boundaries on the amount and/or complexity of the information that will be exchanged should be avoided.
As part of competition and customer choice, the architecture must allow the customer direct real-time access to the utilization information and other information (as described below) usually collected at the meter.  This information is necessary for managing their facility(ies) so they can compete more effectively in their market place.  They will need real-time information for energy management, for complying with  variable rates, and for interfacing to process control systems.  This will allow them to dynamically minimize costs and maximize process throughput.  Providing customer access to the data via a central server will not satisfy the customer's requirements for managing their systems in real time, and will not maximize the potential benefit of deregulation.  Multiple communication channels to the meter will be required.

Power Reliability and Power Quality Metering

From the customer's perspective, price is only one of the dimensions by which electrical supply is measured.  Surges, sags, transients, harmonics, brown outs and interruptions all have a direct and significant economic impact on energy consumers, particularly at the commercial and industrial level.  Just as the customer needs to be able to choose a provider based on the cost of electricity supply, the customer needs to be able to choose a supplier based on quality of service.

This will require some revenue meters to have advanced power quality monitoring capabilities.  We expect that with the development of electric restructuring, buyers and sellers will come to agree on prices for ancillary services and for power quality.  In order to charge for this, meters must be capable of storing this information, and in the case of power quality, will store information upon the occurrence of an event.
As noted above, communications standards must not preclude the transmission of power quality information.


Independent NRTL Lab Certification

Certification of meter compliance to American National Standards for meter accuracy (such as ANSI C12.1, C12.16 and C12.20), for Electrostatic Discharge (such as ANSI 63.16), for Electric Fast Transient (such as ANSI 82.41), for Surge Immunity (such as ANSI 62.41 and ANSI/IEEE C37.90-1989), for Emissions (such as Part 15 of FCC Rules for a Class A Digital Device), and for safety (such as UL 3101-1 and UL 508) should be performed and issued by independent Nationally Recognized Testing Labs (NRTL).
Vendors should also comply with accepted industry standard quality programs (such as ISO9002).
The standards should not bind meter suppliers to utility certification as this artificially limits consumer choice.
Meter Packaging (Form Factor)

There should be no meter packaging  restrictions other than those needed for safety and tamper protection requirements. 
Artificial packaging or mounting standards will limit the development of meters which target the end use customer's specific needs and various energy provider's methods of differentiation.
Traditional meter packaging requirements limit manufacturers from developing and offering innovative new packaging solutions that serve to reduce meter costs, installation costs, in-situ testing costs, and maintenance costs.