METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DETECTING AND REPORTING A POWER OUTAGE

摘要

A method and apparatus for detecting a power outage within an energy meter a nd alerting a remote central computer about the outage using call-in reporting via modem (35) within the meter to a telephone numbe r designated for outage reporting. A primary battery cell or pack (55) is placed inside the meter (40) to operate the modem (35) when lin e power is lost. The modem (35) switches from a line power source in the meter (40) to the battery source (55) when an outage is detect ed and is to be reported to the remote central computer as an outage call. The battery source (55) is switched off when the outage is completed or aborted. The number of retries to call to report the power outage and the time period between retries is programmable.