Electric Meter Installed Base
Source: Pike Research (click here to learn more)
As described by Pike Research, smart meters are the vanguard of Smart Grid deployments, and will represent a $3.9 billion global market by 2015, with penetration in that year still only reaching 18% of total installed electric meters. The opportunity is unprecedented as the industry undergoes a disruptive transition to incorporate new technologies enabling a more efficient, reliable, and bi-directional power distribution and transmission infrastructure.
As meters have transitioned to advanced smart meters, the path has followed a non-integrated approach, from both a silicon and component perspective. Standard silicon offerings for these products lack high integration due to the investment cost plus challenges involved with silicon integration. At the equipment level, utilities have forced meter manufacturers to multisource components to reduce deployment risk and cost. The hope has been that interoperability among suppliers would lead to increased bargaining power and reduced deployment risk from supply-chain interruptions. Another belief is that by using an integrated, standard offering, a meter manufacturer may lose their differentiation advantage. This lack of integration, however, results in higher part count and meter costs, which is contrary to the needs of residential markets where cost is critical to deploy in large volumes. Now, with the introduction of ASMgrid, Accent is able to address all the concerns of both meter manufacturers and energy suppliers
Accent in Smart Metering
With ASMgrid, Accent provides OEMs unprecedented technology breadth enabling highly integrated solutions guaranteed to reduce BOMs while the platform’s flexibility insures their differentiation is preserved. The following use cases demonstrate this and show how ASMgrid can be applied within a meter device. When coupled with our TurnkeyPLUS Program, Accent provides equipment manufacturers a one-stop-shop for their silicon mass production needs.
Broadband Powerline Add-On Smart Meter Module
In many cases, NAN/WAN or AMI functionality is provided as a plug-in board for installation in a meter. For many parts of the world, PLC approaches are preferred and according to Pike Research, will be integrated in at least 30% of smart meter shipments from 2011-2015. One reason for this has been that narrow-band PLC technologies are mature and met the early bandwidth needs for smart grid networks. In addition, PLC deployment can be very cost effective when repeaters, used to maintain bandwidth over distribution transformers, can be minimized by virtue of the number of homes per node. However, as smart grid data requirements have increased, the industry has shifted its focus to broadband approaches. ASMgrid’s 100 kbps field-proven PLC offering provides this high bandwidth enabling more frequent meter readings as well as advanced demand response capabilities within the network.
For this ASMgrid configuration, a simpler system may be used which primarily integrates the needed PLC functionality, AFE, 128 KB of flash and lower-end microcontroller. While the resulting IC enables cost savings compared to standard solutions now available, performance and robustness would be greater drivers for this integration.
ASMgrid HAN/NAN Application Processor for a Smart Meter
For greater integration and cost savings, ASMgrid can be used to implement all the needed communication and application processing in a meter. In this use case, ASMgrid’s ZigBee Pro offering provides the needed HAN connectivity while ASMgrid’s PLC is used for NAN or potentially WAN connectivity. As with PLC, ZigBee has gained considerable traction in meter deployments so far and according to Pike Research will represent over 90% of HAN technology shipped with Smart Meters between 2011 and 2015.
For this configuration, flash on the order of 512 KB or greater would be recommended, more than found on most standard silicon offerings, to provide needed flexibility to support firmware upgrades and possible standard changes. Scalability and upgradeability is a required consideration as electric meters have a field life of 15 years. For this purpose, the ARM® Cortex™-M3 is a very good solution providing high performance in terms of power efficiency, code density, and available DMIPS. The result is a dramatic part reduction with need for only one microcontroller for the entire meter.
More Advanced Configurations
While ASMgrid pre-integrates a number of key functions, Accent recognizes that further integration is possible. Two such key areas in which Accent can engage with customers today are the energy measurement portions of a meter as well the sub 1 GHz component used in many deployments for the NAN network. Over its long company history, Accent’s has established expertise in the areas of low power, analog & mixed-signal, embedded, and wireless design with a track record of over 300+ designs and tens of millions of parts in production. In addition to Accent’s design capabilities in these areas, the company has developed a number of silicon-proven technologies—high performance ADC, VLIW DSP, wireless OFDM technology, e.g.—that would serve as the basis for solving these metering pieces.
Key ASMgrid Benefits Include:
- Sustainable Product Differentiation: ASMgrid’s modular, configurable platform approach enables quick changes that match a customer’s product needs, whether the focus is cost reduction, performance enhancement, feature enhancement or all of the above.
- Fast Time to Market and Low Risk: ASMgrid’s pre-integrated, pre-verified turnkey offering includes: ASMgrid1.0 reference silicon, hardware/software development tools, certified protocol stacks. Combined with our TurnkeyPLUS Program, Accent enables silicon mass production ramp in as little as 3-6 months versus years compared to a custom IC approach.
- Accelerated Return-On-Investment: Accent’s pre-integrated ASMgrid platform and comprehensive software solutions dramatically reduce upfront development cost while ASMgrid’s integrated solutions significantly increase your production margins, satisfying demanding ROI requirements on otherwise challenging product programs.
