CAMMESA

The Problem

CAMMESA, the company responsible for the wholesale electric market, needs to know precisely and close to real time, the demand of the greater electric energy users in Argentina. To comply with that requirement, Softron devised the SMED system.

The Challenge

The SMED System covers the largest consumers. In sync and for each of the points, the accumulated consumption is taken at intervals of 15 minutes and transmitted to the Acquisition Center, at most, within 3 minutes. That way it is obtained the updated demand curve and the market aggregated curve. The partial metering (some points and not others) or the delay in receiving consumer data, will difficult making decisions.

The Solution

CAMMESA commissioned Softron the provision of the turn key SMED system for more than 600 measuring points in the provinces of Córdoba, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, Chaco and Formosa. On each measurement point a meter generates pulses in proportion to consumption. The meters are connected to the acquisition equipment, which, at every 15 minutes, reads the accumulated pulses and transmits the reading. The consumption data is received and processed at our Acquisition Center, designed to operate 24 x 7 with more than 99.99% reliability.

The acquisition equipment is based on our Flamenco Green Box, that consists of the capture and processing electronic, a communication modem, a power supply that automatically admits multiple input voltages, a back up battery, state LEDs indicators, and serial and pulse connections.

Most of the Flamenco Green Box kits were installed on environments with unfavorable conditions, where extreme climatic variations had to be considered. The electronic is protected from external agents within a cabinet with IP65 protection, designed for quick and easy installation. The Flamenco Green Box alarms allow our operators to immediately get informed of a power cut, a power reconnection or of a not programmed opening of the cabinet.

In most of the points data transmission is performed through cell phone networks. In remote areas with poor cellular coverage, satellite communication is used quite successfully.

The deployment of the acquisition equipment in the field was performed over several months, during which several situations had to be solved, from installing external antennas (a few higher then 50 meters) to improve the GPRS reception, through filtering extreme tension peaks, till solving vibration problems.

In order to comply with the Service Level Agreement committed with CAMMESA, an efficient technical service was deployed in the field. From regional service bases equipped with a complete stock of spare parts, it is possible to work proactively and quickly solve any problem, at minimum distance to the location where the reparation has to be performed.