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Power Quality Meter and Method of Waveform Analysis and Compression

IP Title

Summary

Smart metering infrastructures consisting of basic energy meters and a dedicated communication network are popular nowadays. They provide a reliable, fast and cost-effective solution to demand side management. Smart meters normally measure kWh for energy monitoring and billing. Recently, power quality (PQ) has become a rising concern to building management due to the proliferation of power electronic devices in buildings. As present smart meters do not measure power quality, PQ meters have to be used to measure electrical power, voltages, currents, power factor and THD. High-end PQ meters also provide information on individual harmonics and waveform capturing for events reporting. They are mostly expensive. Networked PQ monitoring systems are available but their high installation cost limits their applications to major circuits and equipment in buildings.

In view of the need, a novel power quality analysis algorithm is developed for use on a low-cost smart meter. The novel power quality analysis algorithm operates on a commercial grade micro-controller unit and is able to: 1) measure basic power information and harmonic information; 2) provide PQ indicators for transients, voltage sags, voltage swells and notches; 3) conduct waveform feature extraction and compression for transmission over a narrow-band low bit-rate communication network such as ZigBee.

A salient feature of the algorithm is that in addition to conducting power calculations and PQ disturbance indications at the smart meter, highly compressed voltage and current waveform information can be transmitted to the remote central management system of a smart metering infrastructure for storage and further analysis. A prototype meter implementing the novel power quality analysis algorithm has been constructed and tested.

Technology Application

The algorithms developed are implemented on a low-cost smart meter forming part of a Smart Metering Infrastructure. Its purposes and applications are:
To provide a low-cost meter solution for power and power quality monitoring
To record power consumptions for market-driven electricity billing
To record power disturbance information so that remedial actions would be taken.
To provide a feasible monitoring and analysis solution to future building micro-grid systems and in-building electric vehicle charging networks;
To perform power information compression for data transmission over narrow-band, low bit-rate wireless communication network such as ZigBee
To enable detailed and comprehensive power quality analysis at central data management system of a smart metering infrastructure by recording voltage and current waveforms with an error of 1%
To provide power consumption display on the smart meter to alert consumers of the need to save energy
To provide future smart meter level on-off control to switch off equipment when a pre-determined consumption level is reached.

Award

Application Date

05/11/2010

ID No.

12/940,149

Country/Region

Hong Kong

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