MCUs improve smart meter efficiency says Freescale

The microcontrollers are designed to target electricity and flow meters along and according to Freescale, incorporate tamper detection mechanisms and real time usage monitoring. "Our goal is to provide developers with comprehensive plug-and-play solutions designed to alleviate cost and time-to-market concerns, while bringing everyone a step closer to a unified smart grid," said Jeff Bock (pictured), director of product marketing for industrial and multi-market microcontrollers at Freescale. "Freescale's smart energy technologies address smart metering and smart grid applications across the grid, enabling customers worldwide to provide secure, next-generation energy management solutions." The devices have several key functions combined on one chip, which Freescale says has, until now, been unavailable in a single solution. Via a real-time clock (RTC) utility companies may be able to implement different tariffs depending on time of the day, maximum demand and load availability. It incorporates tamper detection mechanisms to detect fraud and send a trigger or error notice to the utility company when tampering is detected. It can also run separately with its own battery power supply in the event of a main power failure, and two separate blocks of flash memory allow a meter to continue operating on one flash bank while the other is being updated with new firmware. Freescale's MCF51EM256 and MC9S08LH64 devices are available now, while the availability of the MC9S08GW64 products will be announced later this year.