METERS/AMR
Itron’s Newest Meter
CENTRON ® Polyphase Extends the Revolutionary CENTRON ®
Platform to the Commercial and Industrial Market
By Greg Myers
L
et’s face it—there are more
electromechanical meters collecting our residential, commercial and industrial (C&I)
electricity usage data than any other meter in the world—more than 90 percent,
according to recent estimates.
But the face of metering globally is
changing. With steadily increasing adoption by utilities large and small, solidstate metering technology is clearly the
way of the future. Itron has shipped more
than 17 million CENTRON® meters for
residential metering applications and
more than 500,000 SENTINEL® meters
for commercial and industrial customers.
Yet despite robust acceptance of these
new generation metering products, many
utilities still find themselves in search of a
solid-state metering solution to effectively serve their smaller commercial and
industrial customers. Single-phase residential solid-state meters don’t provide
the more advanced functionality they require to meet customer needs in this segment, while the higher-end commercial
and industrial meters often amount to
overkill in terms of functionality and are
not easily integrated with large-scale
AMR systems.
Itron is filling that gap in the marketplace with the newest release of the Itron
CENTRON metering family, the CENTRON Polyphase meter, which will go
into full production this year.
“We are targeting the low- to mid-tier
market space between residential solidstate meters and high-end commercial
and industrial solid-state meters, as this
is the next logical AMR saturation step
after the mass market, and the CENTRON Polyphase is the answer,” said
Lowell Rust, manager of Itron’s CENTRON product line. “The CENTRON
Polyphase is an excellent, low- to midtier AMR application that will help our
Reprinted with permission from Utility Products • April 2006 • www.utilityproducts.com
Itron’s Newest Meter
All of the standard features of an ANSI-compliant meter
are packed into the CENTRON Polyphase with the ability
to add enhanced outage notification and restoration to
help utilities reduce outage duration, increase system
reliability and improve overall customer satisfaction.
utility customers strengthen their business
case both for solid-state metering and
AMR/AMI technology.”
CENTRON Polyphase—
The Next Phase
Built upon the revolutionary Hall Cell
metrology, the platform of the CENTRON Polyphase is the same reliable and
proven CENTRON technology that appeals to utilities for its accuracy. It also
offers the easily reconfigurable communication and personality modules that
plug in for advanced functionality. It is
these capabilities that have made the
CENTRON the most sought after residential meter on the market.
As the need to lower operational costs
and improve measurement and billing accuracy grows, the CENTRON Polyphase
meter provides utilities with an unparal-
leled measurement platform to meet the
needs of today and tomorrow.
The CENTRON Polyphase meter architecture is uniquely adaptable so that
utilities can successfully meet future industry demands—on demand.
Some of the new features for optimizing operations include:
• Polyphase, solid-state platform;
• Time of Use/Demand/Load Profile
ANSI Table Register;
• Positive Outage Notification (PON)
and Positive Restoration Notification
(PRN) message enabled in the meter;
• Interchangeable communication personality modules; and
• Auto-ranging power supply.
All of the standard features of an ANSIcompliant meter are packed into the CENTRON Polyphase with the ability to add
enhanced outage notification and restoration to help utilities reduce outage duration, increase system reliability and
improve overall customer satisfaction.
The flexible format of the CENTRON
Polyphase allows communications and
other register functions to be separated
onto option boards for easy upgrades, including demand, time-of-use and load
profile. In addition, Itron will offer the
CENTRON Polyphase CP1S R300 meter—the radio frequency interval data
meter that delivers the Standard Consumption Message to any of Itron’s radio-based data collection technologies,
including handheld computers, vehiclebased mobile units such as Mobile Collector and interval usage data to network
data collection solutions such as the Itron
Fixed Network.
“We are maximizing our research and
development efforts to ensure that the
CENTRON Polyphase has superior flexibility and functionality—a must-do for
advanced solid-state metering platforms
for C&I markets,” said Rust. “We knew
this was something the market lacked,
and we spent our research dollars to give
the customers what they wanted and
needed.”
One utility eagerly waiting for the new
CENTRON Polyphase is Utilities
Kingston. Malcolm King is one of the
people responsible for meter procurement
for the utility. He’s pre-ordered the meters for Utilities Kingston.
“This fits well with the Smart Metering Initiative in Ontario (Canada),” said
King. “The Polyphase version was the
next stage, by extending the CENTRON
family to a single metering platform at a
cost-effective price. It’s flexible and that
is important for a small utility like us.”
Utilities are also looking for ways to
expand and leverage the value of an
AMR deployment. With the CENTRON
Polyphase, smaller commercial and industrial customers will have a highly
adaptable meter with the functionality
and flexibility to meet their specific
needs.
“With 17 million CENTRON meters
shipped so far, we have the trust and confidence of the industry to continue improving our meters,” said Rust. “The
CENTRON Polyphase will cover those
utilities that have C&I customers who require flexibility and affordability. We are
extremely excited about getting the CENTRON Polyphase to those customers.” ❏
Reprinted with permission from Utility Products • April 2006 • www.utilityproducts.com
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