Landis+Gyr display leadership with third generation communication units

“The modular concept of meters and separate communication units enables us to integrate new communication technologies when they become available,” said Juerg Haas, Landis+Gyr Product Manager “The communication units are easily imple-mented using a ‘plug and play’ concept. The old unit can be upgraded with a new one without changing the meter. This guarantees our customers maximum protection on their investment.”

The communication units were developed with thanks to a project initiated three years ago by Landis+Gyr and other leading electric metering companies. Together they formed the workgroup ‘AK14’; their goal was to develop an open communication standard for IP-Telemetry. The standard was complete and will be released this autumn as DIN 43863-4

“With our new communication Units P3x it is now possible to actualise internet communication between the meter and the central station using dynamic IP-addresses according to an open standard. The communication runs over gprs (general packet radio system in a GSM-network) onto the internet and over our iMEGA server to the central station,” said Juerg.

On the internet every device is addressed by its unique IP-address. This IP-address can either be fixed or dynamic. As fixed IP addresses are becoming a rarity they are also becoming more expensive. Rather than using expensive fixed addresses, most devices are addressed by dynamic ones, which can change each time a device con-nects to the internet. In order to be accessible with a dynamic IP-address, a server for dynamic IP-addresses, such as the iMEGA server, must keep track of each device. This procedure is now defined in DIN 43863-4 as an open, vendor independent standard.