At present, the main schemes of electric energy meters in the electric power industry are generally based on semiconductor technology to achieve accurate measurement purposes. Energy meters generally use high-precision A/D converters to sample and analog-to-digital conversion of voltage and current signals from the power grid, and then use high-speed microprocessors to analyze and process digital signals and reprocess and sort data, thus generating various metering data; Finally, various communication interfaces and man-machine interfaces are used to connect with various devices.

The energy meter is a combination of sampling technology, microprocessing technology, design technology and experience, and is a high-tech product across disciplines. Energy meter manufacturers according to their own design understanding and application skills, to achieve the functions of the energy meter. On the watt-hour meter products, it has the needs of multi-function, networking, intelligence and digitalization, which can meet the current requirements of various metering, such as active power metering, reactive power metering, demand calculation, power grid quality detection, power grid event recording and other complex functions, and can be used as a communication slave station for data interaction with the central control master station.

Electricity information acquisition system product technology is in the process of continuous development and improvement, product requirements and product functions are constantly optimized and constantly increased to meet the increasingly high information management requirements. The product technology integrates the current mature energy meter metering function, electromagnetic measurement technology, DSP data processing technology, industrial automatic control technology, wireless remote transmission technology, low-voltage power line carrier communication technology, embedded real-time operating system software platform technology; It is an interdisciplinary and high-tech systematic product, which belongs to emerging products. The current technical level of domestic and foreign manufacturers is basically at the same level, and there is little gap in technology and performance with international well-known manufacturers.

The current mainstream products in the energy meter industry have been in a stage of rapid development in the world, belonging to the sunrise industry, the world including developed economies and developing countries are in the replacement of energy meters to adapt to the current changes in the world situation. First, the global requirements for energy conservation and emission reduction must be accurately measured to promote the power consumption of each power user according to the change of energy control, change the habit of electricity consumption; The second is to adapt to the requirements of modernization and informatization of power enterprise management, through the smart energy meter as a node of the power grid, it can quickly and effectively understand the real-time situation of electricity consumption of power users, substations and other metering and measurement points, and provide more accurate services and management.

The largest demand for electricity meters is single-phase residential electricity meters, but due to the increase in electricity consumption and the increase in electricity load, related electrical equipment requires the use of three-phase power supply. At the same time, the use of three-phase power supply can improve the load balance rate and reduce the power line loss. At present, most of the residential electricity in developed countries has adopted three-phase power supply, domestic such as Ningbo and other coastal economically developed areas, the application of three-phase electronic watt-hour meters has gradually expanded from industrial electricity to residential electricity. Therefore, the demand for three-phase metering energy meters will become more and more large, and the proportion in the demand structure of energy meters will gradually increase.

In order to promote the construction of smart grid, smart energy meters and electricity consumption information collection system will be an important part of the construction of smart grid, to achieve "full coverage, full collection, full cost control" for power users, and will promote the improvement of power consumption information collection system product technology.