User's Guide

Chapter 5 • Features
A c l a r a R F E l e c t r i c I - 2 1 0 + c U s e r G u i d e 27
Other Messages
Other messages are sent over the network beyond the ones depicted here. These
activities include:
• NIC firmware downloads
• NIC reconfiguration
• Historical recovery of daily shifted data
• Historical recovery of interval (LP) data
• Historical recovery of end device events (alarms)
• Meter firmware patch
• Meter reconfiguration (meter programming)
• Publication of engineering statistics
• Security certificate updates
Traffic Classification
The Aclara RF Network utilizes the concept of a traffic class to categorize the
priority and urgency of a message. Messages from the headend that are deemed
“high reliability” will be repeated multiple times by a given DCU and may be
transmitted by more than one DCU. High priority messages will take precedence
over lower priority messages in the DCU queues.
Phase Detection
With the proliferation of rooftop solar panels and electric vehicle charging
stations, it is becoming increasingly important for the utility to know (with
certainty) the names of the phases that each service transformer primary is
connected to. Furthermore, distribution networks may employ polyphase
delta-wye transformers at any point in the network, but particularly at substations.
At some utilities, given the many storms and age of the lines, the quality of the
maps can be found to be less than perfect. Therefore the labeling of the conductors
may also be less than perfect. The purpose of the phase detection feature is to
determine the phase of each meter relative to the source of power.