General Electric Company

Albert R Varney, Jr

Warren R Germer

Samuel G Hardy

Richard G Farnsworth

Leslie J Rosenau

John Raymond Hawley

Dale M Bickford

An electronic register for an electric watthour metering system includes a display buffer for receiving, at substantially the same time, all data items to be displayed. The data items in the display buffer are scrolled to a display in sets appropriate for the capacity of the display. Each set is maintained on the display for as long as required for human reading. The displayed items, having been taken into the display buffer at the same instant, are consistent with each other regardless of the length of time required to complete the display sequence.

Freezing items for display in electronic watthour register

Redundant pulses generated by independently operable pulse sources in an electricity meter are accumulated as pulse counts in a pair of channels of a multi-channel recorder. The pulse counts are compared to verify the accuracy of the pulses counted by each channel. If the difference between the values of the pulse counts exceeds a predetermined threshold value, a trouble indicator is turned on and a telephone call is initiated by the recorder to notify a data center that a system malfunction has occurred which is disrupting the accumulation of pulses in one of the channels of the recorder. The pulse counts are stored in the recorder as substantially duplicate independent measures of energy usage by a load connected to the electricity meter, to be thereafter retrieved from the recorder to obtain energy survey and billing data. The recorder also maintains a system status error log which records the time and date of each malfunction and the identification of the channel pair where the malfunction occurred. In one embodiment, the operation of the recorder is controlled by a programmable microprocessor. Combinations of independent power sources for powering the recorder and the pulse sources are employed to enhance system reliability by making each of the pulse sources and the recorder substantially independently operable.

Redundant pulse monitoring in electric energy metering system

An electric watthour meter includes apparatus for delaying a seasonal rate change until data accumulated in the meter is read out. Dates in a rate-change library, consisting of dates on which a rate change is authorized, are compared each day with the current date. When a match between a rate-change date and the current date is found, an arming signal is generated. The arming signal remains ineffective until a reset signal is generated at the completion of meter reading. Following the reset signal, the arming signal is reset.

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Rochester, NH, United States of America

Albert R Varney, Jr