gud day,

i am ron, i am working as a technical engineer in an electric utility company for an economic zone.

my boss ask me if it is possible to communicate and download real-time data with all of our revenue meters? i was thinking about RS485 via Modbus, but our most distant customer is about a thousand meters which requires a big budget for Rs485.

what method can you recommend for this project to be realized? sorry for my bad english. thank you

ron

 

Ron, your best bet is to go with Modbus Ethernet to Modbus Serial converters. Your next option is Radio Modems but, that reqires radio repeaters if you do not have line of site.

Fred Loveless
Senior Application Engineer
Kepware Technologies
http://www.kepware.com

 

For wireless, you can look at some of the newer mesh technologies using free-band 900Mhz or 2.4GHz. They automatically route & forward information across a site, around obstacles and one can have up to a mile between nodes (or meters).

www.digi.com (disclaimer - my employer) sells Zigbee-based units, and we can allow a Modbus/TCP master to use Ethernet to query a collection of remote Modbus serial devices via mesh. The Ethernet-to-mesh box holds a config which maps the Modbus slave address to the IEEE MAC address for the mesh nodes.

Best regards
- Lynn A Linse, Engineer, www.digi.com

 

hi sir, fred loveless,
can i have your email ad? i want to know more on how to interface ge-kv2+ meters on a host pc via modbus ethernet or radio modem.

thanks.
ron

 

Hi Ron.
I am working with the same Meter but I am using GPRS to transmit the information, I designed a electronic board to fit inside of the meter and the application is based in Ansi C12.19, if you wish we can excahange information about your needs.

best regards,
Lenin.

[email protected]

 

Hello Lynn,

I am interested in your proposed solution for retrieving data from a GE kv2c+ meter. Could you be more specific on the devices needed for this solution or contact me directly to talk over the details?

Regards,

Jake Pritchard
Senior Project Engineer
www.automatech.com