Utility Metering Reference Designs
Microchip offers several development boards and evaluation kits to demonstrate the capabilities of its silicon solutions for utility metering and power monitoring applications. The reference designs and development boards discussed here help you get your utility metering products to market quickly and efficiently.
MCP6L2 and PIC18F66J93 Energy Meter Reference Design (Part Number: ARD00370)
The MCP6L2 and PIC18F66J93 Energy Meter is a fully functional single-phase meter that uses the 12-bit successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC) integrated into the microcontroller. This low-cost design has a shunt as the current sensor. The signal from the shunt is amplified by two external operational amplifiers and applied to the input of the ADC. The PIC18F66J93 directly drives the LCD and communicates via UART with the MCP2200, USB-to-UART serial converter, offering an isolated USB connection for meter calibration and access to the device power calculations. The system calculates active and reactive energy, active, reactive, and apparent power, power factor, RMS current, RMS voltage, and line frequency.
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Microchip energy meter software is used to calibrate and monitor the system. The calibration can be done in a closed-loop or open-loop. When connected to a stable source of voltage and current, the meter can perform an auto-calibration by including the open-loop calibration routine and formulas in the firmware.
MCP3901 PIC18F65J90 Shunt Meter Reference Design (Part Number: ARD00342)
The MCP3901 and PIC18F65J90 Energy Meter Reference Design is a fully functional IEC Class 0.5 compliant single-phase meter. This low-cost design does not use any transformers and requires few external components. The PIC18F65J90 directly drives the LCD and includes both an isolated USB connection for meter calibration and access to the device power calculations. The system calculates active energy, active power, RMS current, RMS voltage, reactive energy, reactive power, apparent power, and other typical power quantities.
Polyphase Shunt Meter With the MCP3910 Analog Front-End Application Example
Resistive shunts are inexpensive, small, highly linear, and immune to magnetic influences when compared to alternative current sensing solutions, such as current transformers and Rogowski coils. However, they lack the electrical isolation needed in polyphase systems, thus requiring isolators at an additional cost. The MCP3918 and MCP3910 2-wire serial interfaces greatly reduce system cost by halving isolation requirements, needing only a single bidirectional isolator per phase for polyphase shunt-based meter designs.
- MCP3901 and PIC18F65J90 Energy Meter Reference Design User's Guide
- MCP3901 PIC18F65J90 Shunt Meter Ref Des (ARD00342) Firmware
Energy Meter 1-Phase Software:
MCP3910 ADC Evaluation Board for 16-bit MCUs (Part Number: ADM00425)
The MCP3910 ADC Evaluation Board provides the opportunity to evaluate the performance of the MCP3910 dual-channel ADCs in multiple devices, isolated systems. It comes with four MCP3910s, three of which are isolated and operate in 2-wire Serial Interface mode. It also provides a development platform for 16-bit PIC® microcontroller-based applications, using existing 100-pin PIM systems, compatible with the Explorer 16 and other PIC MCU demonstration boards.
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The Energy Management Utility software provides a simple and effective way to evaluate the performance and features of the following Microchip products:
