ACCURACY PERFORMANCE OF SPECIAL ENERGY METERS

(SEM) INSTALLED ACROSS A GRID COMPANY IN INDIA

A White Paper by
B M Vyas Yadav Measurements, Udaipur
A. INTRODUCTION
The objective of any grid company is to ensure the optimum utilization of generating resources,
conservation of an eco-sensitive right of way and the flexibility to accommodate the uncertainty of
generation plans.
With implementation of Availability Based Tariff (ABT) across the country, which has a built-in
commercial mechanism to reward proper grid behavior by installing Special Energy Meters (SEM)
at grid substation points where power exchanges hands from one utility to other. This has
significantly stabilized vital grid parameters, i.e. voltage and frequency thereby improving the
quality of power. Most of these meters were installed in between 2000 to 2005.
Even a small inaccuracy in these meters will have large impact in commercial value of the energy
exchanged at particular point of energy transfer. For example a 0.25% error in energy registration
at 400kV GSS will cause a staggering error of approximately 20 million units. Assuming per unit
rate of energy at 4 Rs. the commercial value of this error becomes 80 Million Rs.
The current Indian electricity grid code (IEGC), regulations 2010 requires that these SEM shall be
tested at least once in 5 years; as per CEA installation and operations of meters regulations
2006. Yadav Measurements, Udaipur; an NABL accredited laboratory was awarded an contract
for onsite testing of approximately 950 meters installed at various locations.
Objective of this paper is to share the experience and findings of the above exercise which was
first of its kind for energy meters of this accuracy class involving many interested parties and such
a large geographical area.

B. Details of meters installed

The fully electronic energy meters installed at GSS are suitable for being connected directly to
voltage transformers having a rated secondary line to line voltage of 110V and to current
transformers having rated secondary current of 1A (model- A) or 5A (mode- B).The active energy
measurement is carried out as per on 3 phase 4 wire principle with accuracy of 0.2S of IEC
62053-22 : 2003. The reactive energy measurement is carried out as per 3 phase 4 wire principle
with accuracy of class 2 as of IEC 62053-23:2003.
Number of meter tested : 939
The meters when procured were fully tested to comply as per requirements of above standards.

C. The test plan

The CEA installation and operations of meters regulations 2006 does not specify any specific test
plan for periodic testing. However after a thorough study of applicable standard, it was decided to
carry out following tests at site. The important consideration was to ensure the accuracy of
energy registration in meters.
No load Test: This test ensures that the meter is not registering any energy when there
is no load. This test was conducted for both active and reactive energy in both the direction

of flow of power i.e. import and export. As per requirements of IEC, the test is to be
conducted at 115% of voltage.
Starting current test: This test ensures that meter starts registering energy at minimum
value of load as specified in standard. The minimum value of this starting current for active
energy is 0.001In (In is nominal current i.e. 1A or 5A) and is 0.003In for reactive energy.
Again the test was repeated for both the directions of flow of power.
Limits of error test: This test ensure that the error of meter is within the limits specified in
IEC 62053-22 for active energy and IEC 62053-23 for reactive energy at different load and
power factors. The test is carried out in both balance and unbalance load conditions at
different power factors. Again the test was repeated for both the directions of flow of power.

D. Test equipments and methodology

As per standards requirements the test equipments shall be complying to the requirements of IEC
60736. Yadav Measurements was asked to use an electronic programmable voltage current
source. A reference standard of typical accuracy of 0.02% was used. The overall measurement
system was fully compliant to IEC 60736. The methods as specified in IEC standards were used
for testing.
For testing, it was required to disconnect the meter from circuit and connect to the stable voltage
current source. The TTB connected on each meter was helpful in making these connections.
Hence no shut down of feeder was required. As the testing will cause increments in energy
registers of the meter; it was read before starting the testing and at the end of the testing. This
data of increase in energy registers during the testing was used for correction in energy recorded
during the reading cycle of the meter.

Precision reference energy Meter test set up

The testing of meters which were installed in various states and union territories was started in
July 2009 and completed in August 2010. The testing was witnessed by all concerned constituent
partners of the grid. The whole exercise was done with excellent co-ordination from the grid
company by the appointed nodal officer. A good cooperation was provided by almost all grid
constituent members and Yadav Measurements making it possible to complete the exercise
within stipulated time period.

State Wise coverage

Agency (utility Wise)

Feeder Rating Wise

550
500
450
400
350
300
250

489

217

200
150
100
50
0

116
5
6.6kv

32
11kv

58
7

15

13.8kv

33kv

66kv

132kv

220kv

400kv

E. Results and Analysis

Error Limits as per standards requirements are as following :

Active energy import and export as per IEC 62053-22 : 2003

The difference between the percentage error when the meter is carrying a single-phase load
and a balanced polyphase load at rated current In and unity power factor shall not exceed
0,4 % and 1,0 % for meters of classes 0,2 S and 0,5 S respectively.

Reactive energy import and export as per IEC 62053-23 : 2003

Statistics of pass / Fail Meters

Tests

Quantity Tested Pass

Fail

% failed

No Load Test

939

939

Starting Current Test 939

939

Accuracy Test

929

10

1.1

939

Details of failed meters

Following table provides details of failures in error testing
Failed
meter
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Balance
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Failed in error testing under condition

unbalance Active
Reactive Active
import
import
export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Reactive
export

Yes

ERROR SPAN OF ENERGY METERs (At Ib and in Balanced mode)

Import Mode Histogram

-0.75

-0.50

500
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
-0.25 -500.00

act imp upf

act imp 0.5lag
react imp upf
react imp 0.5lag

error

0.25

0.50

0.75

1.00

Export Mode Histogram

500
400
300

act exp upf

200

act exp 0.5lag

react exp upf

100
-0.75

-0.50

react exp 0.5lag

0
-0.25
0.00
-100

0.25

0.50

0.75

1.00

error

Out of the 10 meters failed in limits of error test; 8 meters failed in active energy
measurement. One failed in reactive energy measurement; while one failed in
both active and reactive energy measurement. The histograms above shows that
errors of most of the meters are positive; however it is well within the specified
limits of the standard.
Conclusion
The exercise has been very useful in identifying meters which were not within
specified limits of standards and were causing inaccurate registration of energy.
So it is very important to carry out this exercise as also required by IEGC.

Authors Introduction
B M Vyas is BE (Electronics) with MBA. He has vast enriching experience in electrical metrology
and testing, specializing for energy meters. He has worked for 14 years in design, development,
production, quality, metrology, calibration, testing and reliability for electricity meter. He is a
qualified lead assessor for ISO9001 and IEC 17025. He is a listed auditor by NABL for
assessment of laboratories for grant of NABL accreditation and has audited more than 25
laboratories on behalf of NABL. He is also member of CBIP technical committee for energy
meters and actively participate in various BIS committee meetings for formulation of various IS
standards for metering.
He is member of IEEE societies for power/energy, EMC, instrumentation and reliability. He is
member of metrology Society of India. Other than various papers at national level, his paper cost
effective accelerated testing was presented in RAMS (Reliability and maintainability symposium)
2003 in USA.
Presently he is Assistant general manager in Yadav Measurements Private Limited looking after
all technical operations of the company.