User's Manual

ANSI Electric Meter v3.1 User’s Guide 59
Note: The KZ output terminals are electrically and physically isolated in the
Echelon meter in regard to safety considerations.
Optical Port Communication
An optical port is provided for local communications at 9600 Baud.
The probe must be connected to a computer that is running the Echelon Provisioning
Tool application. The computer can perform programming operations and may also
be used to view accumulated data and diagnostic information. Refer to the NES
Provisioning Tool User’s Guide for more information about using the Provisioning
Tool to communicate with the meter over the optical port.
The following are required to communicate via the optical port:
 A computer running the NES Provisioning Tool.
 A non-echoing ANSI optical probe, such as Abacus Electrics’ ANSI Type 2
Optical Probe with DTR switch and USB Connector (model number: A9U-P-
U04M-2A). See www.abacuselectrics.com
for more information.
Power Line Carrier Communication
For data transfer to NES System Software, and operating maintenance and
supervision, the meter uses Echelon’s A-Band power line carrier (PLC) technology to
communicate with a Data Concentrator over the power lines. The meter and the Data
Concentrator must be installed on power lines supplied by the same transformer.
The meter supports broadcasting of PLC messages. Even though any valid PLC
command is accepted by the meter as a broadcasted message, many commands are
not suited to be broadcasted. The main use of broadcasting is to perform time critical
actions such as load control. Please see the NES System Software API Reference
Guide for the latest information on which messages can be broadcasted via the
system.
PLC communication to and from the meter can be encrypted. This ability can be
turned on or off in the meter using the Provisioning Tool.
PLC Display Indicators
The meter has two indicators on its display to show PLC traffic detection and
received-message quality.
PLC Traffic Detection Indicator
When initially installed, the meter checks for PLC network traffic
approximately every second. Once valid network traffic has been detected, the PLC
Traffic Detection indicator is shown on the display. It may take up to several
minutes for traffic to be detected, as communication on the network may not be
constant. This depends on the amount of data requests and the number of meters
per transformer. If communication with the specific meter never occurs, this
indicator will remain lit as long as network traffic has been detected within the last
X minutes (X is configurable from 1 to 65535 minutes).