Moscow-based Incotex designed a host of Texas Instruments (TI) technologies into its meter management solutions that are currenly being deployed in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belorussia. Incotex used TI’s MSP430 microcontroller (MCU) and TMS320C2000 digital signal controller (DSC) technologies to help utility companies improve energy efficiency. The solution should reduce energy losses by about 30 percent, the company says. Its automated meter management (AMM) systems are based on TI’s TMS320F28015 DSC and the MSP430F155 and MSP430FE427 ultra-low power MCUs and data converters. The Mercury AMM system for electrical power distribution networks uses TI controller technology to provide automated data collection directly from consumer energy meters over power lines. This makes it possible for electrical utilities to easily detect and correct the location of energy losses. With Mercury PLC AMR, utilities can enable "time of day pricing" in order to better match prices to the cost of generating and delivering power. Consumers receive information on electrical consumption and pricing so they can make educated energy purchasing decisions. According to an Incotex release, high-performance signal processing is critical to ensuring that two-way communications between the utility and meter are received and sent over power lines, since the infrastructure was not initially designed to handle communications traffic. Incotex’s Mercury PLC AMR utilizes TI's F28015 DSC to simultaneously provide orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), which transmits multiple signals simultaneously over a single path. TI’s TMS320C2000 DSCs provide 32-bit fixed-point and floating-point offerings with up to 150 MHz performance, 512-kbyte flash and 68-kbyte of SRAM memory. The 60MHz TMS320F28015 controller used in the Mercury PLC modem is a single-chip solution with a fast 12-bit ADC and PWM generators that perform the digital to analog conversion. Devices within the MSP430FE42x series are highly integrated solutions that eliminate the need for the multiple external components and ICs traditionally responsible for measuring and calculating energy, providing the real-time clock, and driving the LCD display.
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