Low cost combined voltage and current transducer for Smart Meters

One of the key factor for a capillary adoption of smart grid approach in residential or commercial environments is the availability of low cost devices able to carry on required measurement and control tasks. The development and commercialization of low cost smart meters will be an important field of manufacturing in the next future. On the other hand, in addition to simple measurement of energy flows for billing purposes, there is a great interest in customers and utilities in characterize the energy in terms of level of quality, but this requires the calculation of various indexes and the performing of even complex analyses. This leads to an increase of the requirements of both analogical and digital devices composing the smart meters. Great advantages from this point of view come from the availability of more and more powerful microcontrollers at low cost. Analogical devices, such as current and voltage transducers, for power quality assessment over a wide frequency range at low cost still remain a critical aspect. These paper presents an implementation of a smart meter with low cost commercial microcontroller board (Arduino), equipped with a prototype of low cost combined voltage and current transducer designed as shield for the considered microcontroller board. Simulations and experimental characterization of the prototype are shown.