In today’s volatile economic climate, utilities can’t afford costly errors from incorrect billing. Despite this, a traditional 600-V current transformer—which measures energy usage by reducing electrical currents—is at risk for producing less accurate readings when currents fall outside its rated level. The result is potential lost revenue for the utility’s bottom line.
Answering utilities’ call for a single unit that cost-effectively increases current transformer efficiency while exceeding the accuracy range for revenue metering is GE’s Digital Energy business with its RevenueSense 600-Volt current transformer. Acting as the input to a transformer-rated meter, GE’s RevenueSense provides commercial and industrial applications with an extended performance range compared to industry-standard current transformers. By using specialized core material that minimizes electrical losses, RevenueSense also maintains a narrow 0.15 accuracy class (the highest class possible per IEEE) from 1 percent of rated current through rating factor. This translates into significantly less room for error as compared to a standard current transformer, allowing utilities to maximize billing revenue.
“Utility companies are looking for innovative and cost-effective measures to decrease operation and asset costs and increase payback,” said Jim Koepsell, general manager of power sensing, GE’s Digital Energy business. “By accurately measuring the amount of energy consumed by end users in an efficient and reliable way, utilities can ensure proper billing for their customers and reduce the risk of revenue losses.”
GE’s single RevenueSense unit operates over a wider range, eliminating the need for multiple current transformers in a variety of sizes and load capabilities. This not only simplifies the current transformer size and selection process for a utility, it also reduces inventory requirements and costs. GE’s new current transformer also reduces billing multipliers, resulting in improved productivity and minimized risk of error in the billing process and in meter programing.
