Theory and Validation of Electricity Price Issuing Program for Concentrated Meter Reading

This paper describes in detail the principle and process of transparent task mode by comparing the traditional electricity-price issuing mode and the transparent task electricity-price issuing mode. Experimental results of the emulational platform district and the on-site platform district are integrated. This study validates that the actual effect and theoretical analysis of the electricity issuing program for the meter reading mode conform to each other completely. Furthermore, this study proves the feasibility of the transparent task mode in actual electricity information collection. Introduction With economic development and improvement of living standards, power consumption in production and daily life has increased rapidly, thereby bringing challenges to the safe and stable operations of power grids. Construction of the Strong Smart Grid [1] has been included in the national Twelfth Five-Year Plan. Further construction of the collection system and expanded application of the smart electricity meter are important aspects of constructing the Strong Smart Grid. Satisfactory construction of this grid is expected to benefit electric power customers and society in general. The current electricity shortage in China cannot be relieved in a short period. To address this problem, orderly power consumption management based on a collection system is necessary. Since the implementation of tiered pricing for electricity, this policy has gained recognition in the market and among the parties concerned. The demand for multiple functions of the acquisition system has increased [2]. At present, local charge-control smart electricity meters [3] account for more than 90% of smart meters in many regions, which indicates difficulty in electricity price issuing [4]. The electricity-price issuing work mode of the current electricity information collection system is transparent terminal transmission in which the main station of the system issues electricity prices through transparent terminal transmission. Actual feedback data show that this program is characterized by a low issuing success rate, large amount of time consumed, and task-issuing failure rate of approximately 30%. The program requires manual debugging on the site and consumes significant manpower and material resources, especially in remote regions with sparse populations. In addition, it consumes significantly more time than automatic issuing [5]. Differences between meter reading mode and traditional electricity-price issuing mode The design of electricity-price issuing systems has been improving in China [6], and power companies in different parts of the country are committed to developing a highly advanced mode. When analyzing the original system, we found that the same communication process between the main station and the smart electricity meter (that is, the same communication channel) generally involves a daily collection success rate above 95% in the electricity information collection system throughout China. The average success rate of the communication channels of the collection system 6th International Conference on Mechatronics, Materials, Biotechnology and Environment (ICMMBE 2016) © 2016. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 451 is high. Thus, theoretically, electricity price issuing can reach the level of meter-reading success rate if a reasonable approach is adopted. The main purpose of the current price issuing mode is to achieve electricity price adjustment through real-time communication interaction of the main station of the system, terminal uplink and downlink modules, smart electricity meter, and other links. First, the main station of the system issues an identity authentication command to the concentrator, which directly forwards the authentication command to the electricity energy meter. Then, both the main station and the concentrator are in the waiting state. After identity authentication, the electricity energy meter gives a response, which is reported to the main station step by step through the concentrator. The identity of the electricity energy meter is valid (Figure 2.1) only if the main station and the concentrator both receive the response within their respective timeout thresholds. The electricity price issuing setting is now issued from the main station to the electricity energy meter. Similar to the identity authentication command, the issuing setting is transparently transmitted through the concentrator (Figure 2.2). Similarly, a reply of the successful new electricity price setting of the electricity energy meter must be received within the communication timeout thresholds of the equipment that it goes through. Finally, it reaches the main station, which indicates successful completion of a traditional electricity issuing task. Therefore, the traditional electricity price issuing mode is a task mode that involves synchronous operation of multiple equipment. This condition indicates high requirements for real-time performance of the communication channel. The electricity price-issuing task fails in case of any of the four problems: main station timeout, concentrator timeout during reporting of identity authentication results, main station timeout, or concentrator timeout during reporting of setting results. In terms of hardware technology, neither GPRS/CDMA, which is commonly used in terminal uplink, nor narrow-band carrier wave channel for downlink is advantageous in real-time performance of a single communication. Therefore, the two types of hardware are set in one real-time task. The communication success probability is the product of their respective communication success rates i P ( 0 1 i P < < ), where 0 i P = is equipment failure, and 1 i P = indicates that 100% success rate does not exist in the long run. Neither of them is counted in a single communication (Formula 1). If a collector or another equipment is involved in the process, a probability multiplier is added, and the ultimate overall communication success rate P decreases.