Electrical energy metering in compliance with recent European standards

The introduction of static electric energy meter together with voltage and current distortions in the electric networks are revolutionizing the measurement of the electrical energy. Several questions and studies are proposed in the scientific literature concerning with metrological and reliability aspects of the actual electrical energy measurement. The European Directive on Measuring Instruments (MID) represents a different spin on setting the performance and safety requirements for those meters. Another European group, the OIML (International Organization for Legal Metrology) has published the document D11 discussing recommendations for legislation to meet the MID. An OIML technical committee is drafting the recommendation (IR46) that would give regulatory bodies an easily-adoptable set of requirements and tests to meet the needs of the MID. The recent literature have faced different issues concerning with the active and reactive electrical energy measurements in terms of definition, physical meaning and measurement methods. With the introduction of the MID directive, the actual discussion involves aspects as the metrological characterization of the meters. The paper proposes an analysis of the test settings imposed by the actual MIDharmonized standards, regarding the electric energy metering. The aim is to check if there are some degree of freedom in the test settings that could compromise both result reliability and the compliance/non-compliance of a given apparatus.