ST leadership in Smart Meters through STCOMET

STMicroelectronics is a world leader in providing the semiconductor solutions participated in India Smart Grid Week from March 15-19, 2016 at New Delhi. STMicroelectronics is a leader in smart grid solutions. At ISGW, ST showcased their innovations in smart grid solutions with special focus on STCOMET, a complete system meter on a chip.

Mr. Mauro Colombo, Technical Marketing Expert, STMicroelectronics and Ms. Sapna Mongia, Head- Technical Marketing and Application – Industrial and Power Discrete Group Business, STMicroelectronics, India spoke to EM about ST smart grid vision for India and how their products meet Indian smart grid requirements.

1. What is your vision for participating at Smart Grid Week 2016? What are the products/ solutions that you are showcasing at ISGW?

Supplying energy efficiently is key to powering the country’s industries and growth but the power infrastructure in India faces challenges in capacity. To meet ever-increasing energy needs and control power theft and transmission losses, India has launched ambitious missions to establish smart grids and build smart cities. Establishing the India Smart Grid Task Force and Smart Grid Forum will help by centralizing activities and improve implementation of decisions taken by government bodies. What is still missing on the smart grid front in India is policy and regulatory framework standardization.

STMicroelectronics can help move this process forward using lessons learned through more than20+ years of experience in Smart Grid and Smart Metering. As a top leader in powerline Communications (PLC),we have sold more than 50+ million PLC transceivers globally), MCUs, and Smart-Meter Systems-on-Chips, including turn-key HW and SW reference designs, customer IP protections, and field support and certification support and can provide entire solutions in Smart Metering.

STMicroelectronics’ advances in narrow-band power-line communication (PLC) technologies have been adopted as Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) and Automatic Meter Infrastructures (AMI) solutions at the heart of the smart grid concept. Our large and expanding offer ranges from our first-generation analog Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) transceivers with an integrated power-line driver to a second-generation, dual-core, multi-protocol, STarGRID® system-on-chip platform with an integrated power-line driver, analog front-end and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption that supports B-FSK, B-PSK, Q-PSK, 8-PSK and OFDM (Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) modulations

ISGW was a venue where ST was able to showcase to India our technology leadership in the Smart Grid segments by sharing our expertise, knowledge, and worldwide experience in smart meter design and deployment. At the show, we demonstrated our technology and offerings in powerline communications, metering, and connectivity devices. Our vision is to help India’s metering industry with our vast experiences and while we develop a roadmap of new products that are perfectly suited to the India market.

At ISGW, we showcased our flagship STCOMET chip, a complete smart-meter system-on-chip, which allows any smart-meter manufacturer to develop a meter around this chip, which includes the metrology, memory, and communication interfaces. Thus, a powerline communication smart meter can be built around this chip. The chip can also be used as core IC for a module to be inserted in an existing standard meter. The powerline communication of this chip supports all the international standards such as G3, PRIME, Meters and More, and IEEE1901.2.

2. What is your assessment of India’s smart grid and future prospects?

In addition to the common concern that emerging countries cannot produce enough energy, the India Power Sector is challenged by power loss during transmission and distribution. Smart grids can help address both of those issues and others.

According to India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF), a typical city of 5 to 10 lakhs population would require about INR 300 to 500 crores for modernizing the electricity grid, depending on the present condition of the equipment. This would entail investments to the tune of $7.5 billion (around Rs. 50,000 Cr) from the current levels of Rs. 100 Cr, for building smartgrids in 100 smart cities. This could happen in the next four to five years. The government is expecting that all 100 smart cities and 500 smart town would be running on smart grids in the next 5-10 years. The initiative would involve underground cables at strategic locations in the city, automating substations and distribution network, smart metering, rooftop solar integration etc.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/energy/power/smart-grid-market-to-touch-rs-50000-crore-in-five-years/articleshow/51102850.cms

With more than 20 years of Smart-Grid and metering experience and a strong global presence. STMicroelectronics is a leader in smart grid solutions. ST has major programs in place to support smart-grid concepts where semiconductor technology will play a critical role: (a) smart metering, (b) building automation, (c) PHEVs (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) and (d) renewable energy sources. With many successful customer engagements around the world, ST is a leader in smart-meter chips and a principal /founding member in Industrial Alliance / SDO defining protocol communication[1]for Smart Grid/ IoT and driving major PLC Smart Metering programs in the world.

3. What products is ST showcasing here?

ST has shown our latest systems-on-chips for Smart Metering applications, including the future-proof, fully-programmable, dual-core STCOMET, which supports communication bandwidth up to 500 kHz, with an integrated Analog Front End (AFE), power-line driver, an embedded modem and programmable MCU. The STCOMET also includes a fully-integrated smart meter SoC that embeds high-performance metrology functions.

Our STCOMET powerline communication platform comes with an extensive toolbox that includes evaluation boards, evaluation software and certified protocol stacks, providing designers with a comprehensive development environment that enables easy integration into new and existing designs and shorter time to market.

ST can offer subsystems for these applications as well as complete solutions for powerline communication and sensing.

4. Any new launches at ISGW?

As mentioned above, we presented STCOMET, a complete system meter on a chip. STCOMET integrates a powerline communication (PLC) modem, a high-performance application core and metrology functions. The STCOMET SoC has become one of the first two ICs to complete the new G3-PLC™ certification program announced by the G3-PLC Alliance in September 2014.STCOMET has also recently passed interoperability tests for PRIME® 1.4, the latest version of the PRIME Alliance PLC standard used by over four million smart meters in service today. It is already certified to PRIME 1.3.6, and supports S-FSK IEC61 334-5-1, METERS AND MORE®, and IEEE 1901.2 PLC standards. STCOMET is among the first chipsets to pass interoperability testing, allowing new equipment to benefit from the latest advances while also ensuring compatibility with existing infrastructure.

5. How do you look at the Indian market, considering people here, are not really aware of Smart Metering as a concept.

Although India operates one of the largest electricity grids in the world with 290 GW generation capacity, over 250 million people are not connected to the grid and several parts of the country experience frequent power cuts. India’s per capita consumption of electricity — currently one-third of the average – should increase with the country’s economic development. To address the ever-increasing need for energy, India has launched ambitious missions to establish smart grids and smart cities.

Source: http://www.altenergymag.com/news/2016/02/23/india-smart-grid-week-conference-to-discuss-potential-of-smart-grids-towards-resolving-india%E2%80%99s-energy-crises/22909/

As a global smart home and smart city market leader, STMicroelectronics brings its expertise in technology and skills to the India market. We are proactively participating in the BIS standardization committee and contributing to the development of India’s smart-meter specifications. We have also shared our knowledge and experience with the Indian utilities and manufacturers and the Government is also working in this domain to encourage and build smart meters. So together with all the stakeholders, we are trying support and help develop the entire ecosystem.

6. Is STMicroelectronics working on with some government initiatives to promote such solutions?

In India, ST has worked with both private and state utilities to promote appropriate solutions to them.

7. What kind of pilot projects you are demonstrating in the booth?

We presented all our portfolio for PLC devices, with special focus on STCOMET. Moreover, we also shared our experience in smart metering projects deployments based on powerline communication. ST devices are playing a leading role in successful smart metering deployments in Italy, Spain and France.

8. Indian power system is not Fool-Proof. There is the ever present issue of black marketing and theft of power. Do these solutions provide safety and security from such challenges typical to the Indian market?

ST’s solutions have an inbuilt encryption technology based on newest algorithms and technologies that secures the data from within the meters and we can suggest, customize, and provide new solutions to fully meet customer function, security, and safety needs.

9. What are the prices of these devices?

As a chip manufacturer, STMicroelectronics is working very closely with the leading meter manufacturers. We provide our SoCs and other ICs to them at very competitive prices.

10. How much will the end user pay for such solutions?

STMicroelectronics is a chip manufacture and we provide our SoCs and other ICs to the meter manufacturers at very competitive market prices. Pricing for the meters that utilize our chips are set by regulators or government bodies so we’re unable to answer that.

[1] G3, PRIME, IEC61334-5-1, Meters & More