| 摘要 |
The invention involves the collection of periodic data 1 representing the consumption of a metered quantity (electricity, gas or water) and storage thereof in a memory 22. The data may be consumption over a specified period eg successive half-hour intervals, or predetermined times in successive days. The data may accumulate 21 in the latter case. When the memory 22 approaches a full state, some at least of the already stored data is compressed by summing to produce a lower resolution measurement and this is itself stored. This will free at least one storage location. Further developments include defining the time periods by means of program control 23 or carrying out a similar compression as above before transferring the data to a second storage device eg a small card which is then transportable to a central station. The data being collected may be from separate metering points and the data may be compressed before storage. In a modification there may be accumulation of consumption from different sets of time periods and both sets, which may be independently generated, are stored in separate sections of the data storage. <IMAGE> |
