New Industry Products

Energy Metering IC Delivers High Accuracy and Protects Smart Meters Against Tampering

October 27, 2010 by Jeff Shepard

Analog Devices, Inc. introduced an energy metering IC (integrated circuit) that enables smart meters to provide stronger protection against electricity theft, improve customer billing accuracy and reduce operating costs for utility companies. The ADE7953 energy metering IC is designed for single-phase meter configurations and can accommodate the electrical needs of homes ranging from small apartments to large residences in which many appliances and electronic devices are used. The new product measures active, reactive and apparent energy along with rms voltage and current. It also provides neutral current measurements that help designers develop tamper-proof smart meters.

"The ADE7953 improves customer billing accuracy, which in turn lowers utility operating costs, such as customer service," said Ronn Kliger, Energy Group director, Analog Devices. "The neutral current measurement offered by the new device enables designers to develop more tamper-resistant smart meters, which are invaluable to utility companies that are estimated to lose billions of revenue dollars worldwide each year due to electricity theft."

By achieving less than 0.1% error for both active and reactive energy calculations over a dynamic range of 3000:1, the ADE7953 provides the industry’s highest accuracy for single-phase metering applications worldwide. For neutral current, the device offers less than 0.1% error active and reactive energy over a 1000:1 dynamic range. Neutral current measurements enable meter tamper detection and improved billing accuracy. The new device also measures apparent energy along with rms voltage and current. Additionally, it provides waveform sampling, instantaneous power readings and power quality indications that include voltage sag, peak voltage and peak current. The ADE7953 incorporates three sigma-delta ADCs (analog-to-digital converters) with a high accuracy metrology engine. Each input channel supports independent and flexible gain stages, making the ADE7953 energy metering IC suitable for use with a variety of current sensors, such as low value shunt resistors and current transformers. Two on-chip integrators also facilitate the use of di/dt sensors for current inputs.

Additional features and benefits include: Rms current and voltage measurements are offered with less than 0.2% error over a 500:1 dynamic range; access to on-chip meter registers via a variety of communication interfaces including SPI (serial peripheral interface), I²C or UART (universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter); two configurable pulse output pins provide outputs that are proportional to active, reactive, or apparent energy, as well as rms current and voltage; a full range of power quality information, such as overcurrent, overvoltage, peak and SAG detection are accessible via the external IRQ pin; and a 3.3-V supply operation.

Recommended complementary components for the ADE7953 energy metering IC include the ADP121 linear regulator, AD7814 temperature sensor, ADuM141x four-channel digital isolators, ADuM120x two-channel digital isolators, ADM2484E RS485 transceiver, ADM6320 supervisory circuit, ADP5022 buck regulator, and ADF7023 RF transceiver.

The ADE7953 is sampling now with volume production scheduled for January 2011, and priced (each, per 1,000) at $2.15.