Updated September 9, 2020
Ever thought about capacitive touch playing an important aspect within high voltage and high wattage applications in the smart grid space?
While typical human machine interface systems (HMI) are primarily used in personal electronics and appliance markets, there are genuine requirements in grid infrastructure where capacitive touch technology becomes necessary.
Let’s start with the largest segment of grid infrastructure: electric meter applications. Utility companies are mainly interested in minimizing the distribution losses and recovery of funds for the electricity usage. Smart electric meters have been significantly growing in this market and are using keypads for the number or token entry to validate the purchase.
Figure 1. Examples of electric meters
Replacing the mechanical buttons with capacitive touch technology in smart meter applications could solve many issues:
With our CapTIvate™ technology on MSP430™ microcontrollers (MCUs), utilities could really solve these problems over existing solutions in a very effective manner due to the following features.
Also, the ultra-low-power consumption of MSP430 MCUs with 0.9uA per button helps maintain the required 10 years of battery life for these applications.
We also see an increase in use cases for other end equipment within a smart grid infrastructure, including:
The features of CapTIvate technology provide unique differentiation to many types of smart meters and helps improve the overall user interface.
To learn more about our ultra-low-power MCUs and our CapTIvate technology: