ADD Grup obtains PRIME 1.4 certification for its AD11A single-phase smart meter

ADD GRUP has recently certified its single-phase smart meter for compliance with PRIME 1.4 specification.

The meter is designed on a platform that supports multiple communication technologies, like PRIME 1.4, PRIME 1.3.6, support of potential Hybrid PRIME PLC, awaited at the end of 2022, as well as Hybrid G3-PLC.

It should be noted that ADD GRUP has a proven two years field experience using PRIME 1.4 in CH 3 to CH8. One of the projects was deployed in a sea port, where metering infrastructure is operating in a grid environment with heavy noise pollution in CENELEC A frequency band, making stable communication practically non-achievable.  Noise is generated by expensive heavy industrial equipment, where neither equipment replacement nor noise filtering is possible. Thus the only option was to move communications to higher range of frequencies not affected by noise. This was successfully done with the help of new generation of meters and concentrators supporting PRIME 1.4. Transition to CH5 helped to achieve practically ideal communication environment.

Upgrade to Prime 1.4 with a choice of channels from 3 to 8 will provide an additional set of settings to significantly reduce the field work associated with operational costs during the cleanup process and subsequent network maintenance. This leads to a significant reduction in both equipment and labor costs to achieve 100% data collection and ensure communication with each of the devices to an almost online mode, which is extremely important in case of frequent on-demand requests (turning off / on relays, real-time alarms).

Next phase of roll-out of PRIME 1.4 are residential consumers where we intend to do benchmarks between Prime 1.3.6 Cenelec A, Prime 1.4 Cenelec A and Prime 1.4 in CH3 to CH8. The results will be published in late 2022 or early 2023.

Having a footprint of at least 2 mln smart meters working on PRIME and seamlessly delivering at least 98-99% data collection rate in the harshest environments ADD GRUP is confident that migration to PRIME 1.4 is the next step to a more reliable communication future.

If you want to know more about PRIME certification, please access here or have a look to PRIME certification brochure.