Geared Motors for Smart Energy Meter

With the acceleration of the development and utilization of electric energy, smart terminals of smart grids have gradually begun to deploy smart meters with functions such as electric power measurement and timing, billing, communication with master computer, and power management. At present, smart meters can be roughly divided into two categories: electromechanical energy meter and electronic energy meter. In the aspect of micro gear drive system, ZHAOWEI helps the energy meter realize intelligent management and use.

ZHAOWEI Electromechanical Energy Smart Meter Drive System

The electromechanical energy meter uses an electronic metering circuit to obtain a digital pulse signal and then uses a micromotor to drive the code wheel to obtain the energy count value. This structure is simple and feasible for an electronic meter, but the requirements of the circuit are high. All meters need to convert the electric energy value into a corresponding number of digital pulses according to a fixed ratio, then the micromotor rotates the code wheel.

At present, in order to improve the accuracy of the meter and the consistency of the product, the electromechanical energy meter on the market need to increase human and material resources in the production process to screen the components and adjust the semi-finished products, resulting in long production cycles and high cost.

In order to solve this problem, we have added a gear reduction motor in front of the micro motor drive system with an electronic counting device. The planetary gearbox structure is used to optimize the electronic count device of the code wheel drive system, to stabilize the code wheel driven by micro motor and to solve the problems of concentricity and uniform speed of small-volume products, realizing that each meter converts the electric energy value into a corresponding number of digital pulses according to a fixed ratio, and drives the micromotor to rotate the character wheel at the correct speed. In order to achieve automatic metering and billing and control, it greatly reduces the production cost and production cycle and solves the problem of the correct reading of smart meters.

ZHAOWEI Electronic Energy Meter Drive System

Electronic energy meters are smaller, more reliable and consume less power than electromechanical energy meters, but the service life and reliability of Electronic energy meters is an urgent problem to be solved.

The failure mechanism of electronic energy meters is not the same as that of mechanical energy meters. The failure mechanism of mechanical energy meters is mechanical wear type. Once a failure occurs, the power of the meter is still available, and its impact is relatively small. The failure mechanism of the electronic energy meter is sporadic. Once a failure occurs, it may lead to the loss of electricity, no display, or loss of historical measurement data, which will bring immeasurable economic losses to the power grid. At the same time, electronic energy meters have disadvantages such as the poor anti-interference ability.

To solve this problem, we try to add an intelligent self-locking function to the circuit breaker controller of the electronic energy meter. Considering that the stable operation of the loop control system can be driven in a limited space of the meter’s smart controller and only the rotation in the specified direction is allowed, we adopt 10mm planetary gearbox and turbine inserts with injection molding for loop controller gearbox. Thus, the transmission structure has the characteristics of small volume, high torque, and can meet the needs of the self-locking function.

The circuit controller gearbox in this design can realize the reverse self-locking of the electronic energy meter, which can transmit the power of the active end of the motor without responding to external loads, thereby isolating the external load from affecting the smart meter’s own mechanism. When encountering possible damage, the ZHAOWEI smart meter gear motor (also called loop controller gear motor) will stop automatically, which will improve the life of the smart meter, and solve the problem of data loss during a sudden power failure, and protect data security.

ZHAOWEI Gearbox Specification for Smart Energy Meter

Voltage: 1.5V

Reduction Ratio: 171：1

No-load Current: ≤160mA

No-load Speed: 30±15%rpm

Working Temperature: -30℃~80℃

Noise: ≤50 dB

The gearbox for smart energy meter can be customized according to customer needs such as transmission stage, reduction ratio, output speed and torque.