Electronic electric meter for networked meter reading

Abstract

An electronic electric meter for use in a networked automatic meter reading environment. The electric meter retrofits into existing meter sockets and is available for new meter installations for both single phase and three phase electric power connections. The meter utilizes an all electronic design including a meter microcontroller, a measurement microcontroller, a communication microcontroller and spread spectrum processor, and a plurality of other communication interface modules for communicating commodity utilization and power quality data to a utility. The electric meter utilizes a modular design which allows the interface modules to be changed depending upon the desired communication network interface. The meter measures electricity usage and monitors power quality parameters for transmission to the utility over a two-way 900 MHz spread spectrum local area network (LAN) to a remotely located gateway node. The gateway node transmits this data to the utility over a commercially available fixed wide area network (WAN). The meter also provides direct communication to the utility over a commercially available network interface that plugs into the meter's backplane or bus system bypassing the local area network communication link and gateway node.

1 . A commodity monitoring network comprising:
 a commodity provider operable to provide a commodity;   at least one measuring device being operable to measure a utilization characteristic of the commodity provided by the commodity provider, and to generate utilization data based on the characteristic; and   a gateway node receiving routing data from the commodity provider and having a scheduler operable to program a scheduled reading list using the routing data, to retrieve a scheduled measuring device data from the scheduled reading list, and to initiate a scheduled meter reading using the scheduled measuring device data.   
     
     
         2 . The commodity monitoring network of  claim 1 , and wherein the gateway further comprises a communication section operable to receive data including the routing data from the commodity provider, to generate communication data using the initiated scheduled meter reading, to wirelessly transmit the communication data to the measuring device, and to wirelessly receive data including the utilization data from the measuring device. 
     
     
         3 . The commodity monitoring network of  claim 2 , and wherein the gateway node receives the data from the provider over a network. 
     
     
         4 . The commodity monitoring network of  claim 3 , and wherein the network comprises a common carrier wide area network. 
     
     
         5 . The commodity monitoring network of  claim 1 , and wherein the gateway node receives the utilization data over a wireless network. 
     
     
         6 . The commodity monitoring network of  claim 1 , and wherein the communication section comprises a radio-frequency handler having a plurality of communication channels, operable to transmit a radio-frequency message, to select a communication channel based on the message, and to receive radio-frequency data from the measuring device with the selection channel. 
     
     
         7 . The commodity monitoring network of  claim 1 , and wherein the gateway node further comprises a message dispatcher operable to receive a request message from the network handler, to route to communicate with the measuring device when the request message targets the measuring device, and to route to process the request data on the gateway node when the request message targets the gateway node. 
     
     
         8 . The commodity monitoring network of  claim 1 , and wherein the gateway node further comprises a data store operable to verify the network data, to receive a meter identification, to retrieve a provider identification based on the meter identification, and to process the meter and commodity identifications based on the network data. 
     
     
         9 . The commodity monitoring network  claim 1 , wherein the at least one measuring device is an electric meter.