Smart Meters should be smarter

For over a century, most revenue meters have been unable to separate the distortion components from metered power quantities, leading to inaccurate measurements under non-sinusoidal conditions. With IEEE Standard 1459 and modern DSP technology, Smart Meters should be able to treat harmonics separately. However, there is a persistent view that doing so is impractical, or would add to the cost of Smart Meters. This paper will illustrate the problem with power definitions by example, and demonstrate the ability of a common metering chip, as used in many Smart meters, to meter fundamental power quantities P₁, Q₁, and S₁, accurately with no additional cost to the meter, building on previous tests of metering chips [1].