Microchip offers a complete portfolio of 8-, 16- and 32-bit microcontrollers, energy measurement integrated circuits (ICs), analog and interface devices, and flash memory and serial EEPROMs for your utility metering design applications. These devices allow you to:

• Directly drive inexpensive LED and LCD displays.
• Add wireless communication for an automated meter reading.
• Implement anti-tampering techniques.
• Manage low-power design with eXtreme Low Power (XLP) technology.
• Integrate real-time clock for advanced billing schemes.
• Improve accuracy and simplify meter calibration.
• Easily integrate touch sensing functionality into your designs with mTouch® sensing solutions.

Microchip's free MPLAB® X Integrated Design Environment (IDE) provides a single platform for product development, reducing the time it takes to complete new designs or to modify existing designs to meet regional needs. Microchip's Metering Design Center features complete access to all of Microchip’s metering application notes, software libraries, reference designs, and other technical documentation to help you get your products to market quickly and efficiently.

Energy Measurement ICs - MCP391X Family

The MCP391X family offers highly accurate energy measurement analog front end (AFE) products with up to eight channels for single-phase and three-phase metering. When paired with a PIC® microcontroller, the MCP391X offers you a complete, flexible and highly accurate solution for energy measurement in utility metering and power monitoring applications. The MCP391X devices feature simultaneous sampling 16/24-bit delta-sigma A/D converters, internal voltage reference, and Programmable Gain Amplifiers (PGAs). With up to 94.5 dB SINAD and −107 dB THD performance, this family allows for the highest accuracy designs enabling 0.1% active power measurement error over a 10,000:1 dynamic range. Additional innovations include a unique 2-wire serial interface that reduces expensive isolation requirements.

Analog and Interface Devices

Microchip provides a wide portfolio of analog and interface components that are well suited for metering applications. Low-power and precise operational amplifiers enable signal acquisition for accurate measurements of current, voltage, temperature or flow. Microchip's family of temperature sensors provides accurate measurements to compensate for temperature drifts in meter components. Infrared interface devices provide a platform of products for developing a robust communication method for data gathering at meter locations.

Microchip Memory Products

Microchip offers a broad range of memory devices which include SRAM, EEPROM and serial Flash, and parallel Flash. These devices support a variety of densities that can operate over wide voltage and temperature ranges in very small packages, suitable for many metering applications.

SPI-compatible Serial SRAM devices support unlimited endurance and fast write times. If non-volatile memory is needed, our very high-endurance Serial EEPROMs offer the highest Erase/Write cycle endurance in the industry. These devices are available with I2C™, SPI, or Microwire serial interfaces to support any microcontroller serial port that has been selected. For applications with higher-density memory requirements, our SuperFlash^® SPI, SQI^®, and parallel Flash products are ideal solutions. In designs that require a boot loader, SPI Flash can be used to store the boot code, making it available for download into shadow memory upon power-up. For applications that require execute-in-place, the higher bandwidth SQI Flash and parallel Flash have this same capability. SuperFlash products are cost-effective non-volatile memory data storage solutions, offering industry-leading features along with fixed and fast program/erase times, ultra-low power consumption, high-endurance, and excellent reliability.

Serial SRAM Family

Utility Metering Reference Design