Quatech Products Used: QSE-400D 4 Port RS-232/422/485 Serial Device Servers

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Automated Meter Readers (AMR) are used by field technicians to gather usage data from customer sites. In traditional systems, the field technician would need to physically connect his AMR to the serial port on an AMR server, located in a regional field office, which would download the data and transmit it, via dedicated dial-up telephone lines, to a central Master Data center for processing. As each of the AMR Server upload systems requires expensive equipment along with its own dedicated phone line, utilities typically install as few as possible. This means technicians must drive considerable distances each day--often taking major detours from their routes--to pick up AMRs and to download data after all readings are complete.

Device servers solve this problem by network-enabling AMRs and leveraging existing Ethernet networks to streamline the acquisition and processing of AMR data. The diagram above depicts one such system. Using a multiport Quatech device server, up to 32 AMRs can be connected per port in an RS-485 multidrop configuration. This means a four-port device server can connect 128 AMRs. (1 and 2 port device servers are also available for smaller installations, and 8 port units are available for very large ones.)

The device servers network-enable the AMRs so that the Central Master Data Center Server can download from the devices just as if they were physically connected to a local COM port. Because of the low cost of implementing device server-based AMR download stations, these station can be located in very field office, thus improving productivity of field technicians who no longer need to make a daily drive to regional download centers.

Other Energy Management Applications:

• Network-enabled energy curtailment management system
  
  
• Network-enabled substation monitoring and control
  
  
• Natural gas well monitoring
  
  
• Mobile HVAC maintenance system