Freescale Demos its Smart-Meter-on-a-Chip

Turnkey embedded control solutions designed for the Smart Grid industry were demonstrated at a metering conference in Barcelona this week. Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor said its poly-phase reference design, based on its new MCF51EM256 ColdFire® MCU, is a cost-optimized implementation of a single-phase or three-phase smart electrical meter. Freescale indicated it designed the MCF51EM MCU family to help developers reduce the cost and complexity of designing electricity meters for a wide range of residential and commercial applications. “Freescale recognizes that embedded control and integrated connectivity will be at the heart of future smart grids and has developed a new generation of intelligent system-on-chip controllers specifically for Smart Grid applications,” said Aiden Mitchell, director of Industrial and Multi-Market Microcontrollers at Freescale. “Our goal is to provide developers with complete plug-and-play solutions designed to alleviate cost and time-to-market concerns, while bringing everyone a step closer to a unified Smart Grid.”

   Quick Take: This could bode evil for meter vendors who take the add-on module approach. History tells us that eventually they put all the function onto one chip or chip assembly, thereby reducing costs. Echelon seems to be leading in this regard amongst the majors and now Freescale is jumping in.

   Freescale press release

   Smart Grid Technology / Metering on SGN