Power Meter (Three-phase)

Overview

The use of power meters which are capable of remotely control a variety of household appliances and systems is increasing. This is a result of energy-efficiency and environmental friendliness increase in awareness and demand. This, in turn, has made the usage of local energy resources more efficiently. As power meters become a communication gateway to the home, they are becoming more advanced in both their performance and functionality.

A power meter must operate on its internal battery from when it leaves the factory to when it is installed at its final destination. Low-power consumption is essential when only the real-time clock (RTC) is running. Also needed are a UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter ) for AMR (Automatic Meter Reading) support, infrared communication for meter reading, and data transfer to and from prepaid cards.

Within the MCU lineup offer by Renesas, the 78K0R/Lx3 and the M16C/60 Series provide the high performance, large memory capacity, and low power consumption required by three-phase meters. It embeds multiple UART channels on-chip, enabling a variety of communication formats used by smart meters, and its integrated RTC operates on an extremely low level of power. Additional integrated functions include an on-chip oscillator (OCO) and a watchdog timer (WDT). These reduce the number of external parts needed and thus contributing to costs-down.