New Industry Products

Power Measurement Intros 8500 ION Socket-Mount Electricity Meter

July 15, 1999 by Jeff Shepard

Power Measurement Ltd. (Saanichton, Canada) announced the release of the new 8500 ION socket-mount electricity meter to demand-side markets worldwide. The 8500 ION model is claimed to be the world's first socket-mount energy meter to combine advanced power quality analysis, data/event recording and multi-port communications with revenue-class, three-phase metering. With this exclusive feature set, the new meter provides information that can assist users in cutting energy costs, reducing downtime and selecting energy providers. While competitive revenue class meters include some basic power quality measurements, the 8500 ION meter features detailed harmonic distortion measurement (to the 63rd harmonic), sag/swell detection with detailed analysis, sub-cycle transient detection, digital capture of multi-cycle waveforms, and hundreds of additional power, energy, demand and min/max measurements. With these capabilities the unit is designed to provide complete knowledge of the delivery system on both sides of the metering point that can be fully integrated with existing infrastructure to provide early warning of potential problems, pinpoint disturbance sources, simplify proactive maintenance and generally ensure quality power, according to Power Measurement. The unit also features a number of advanced communication capabilities. The 8500 ION unit has simultaneous multi-protocol communication on up to four ports, which allows the energy user to share data with multiple departments as well as their energy suppliers. The 8500 ION is also claimed to be the first socket meter to offer an Ethernet TCP/IP port for fast, inexpensive connection to existing corporate local or wide area networks (LAN/WAN) or the Internet without having to integrate other communication standards. The unit offers a choice of 10BaseT or 10BaseL (fiber-optic) Ethernet communications. It also includes a RS-232/485 port, an RS-485/modem port, and an optical port. Power Measurement announced that it has entered a world-wide exclusive agreement with ABB for distribution of the 8500 ION.