European Directive 2014/32/EU, known as MID, is an EU directive that applies to measuring instruments and regulates their manufacture, marketing and commissioning.

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The European Measuring Instruments Directive arose from the need to have in all member countries of the community, an unambiguous regulation defining the characteristics of instrumentation intended for the official measurement of different quantities. In order to be compliant with this Directive, instruments, will have to be designed and manufactured in compliance with well-determined technical standards and pass precise tests.

The MID Directive applies to water meters, gas meters, electricity meters, heat meters, taximeters, metric measurements of volumes and weights, continuous and dynamic measuring instruments of liquids other than water. Measurement of electrical energy in accordance with the requirements defined in Directive 2014/32/EU is detailed in Annex MI-003

The heating engineer is required to prescribe the use of instruments that comply with the directive, while the installer is required to ensure that the instruments used comply with the MID. As for the end user, the repercussions are obvious in terms of consumer protection and transparency in commercial transactions.

Purpose

The purpose of this directive, is to harmonize the regulations present in individual countries, going to guarantee the accuracies, extremes of use and quality standards necessary thinking about the delicacy of the measurement of different quantities. The standard thus guarantees measurement by giving rise to precise guarantees for both the supplier of a given commodity and the user.

For each of the specific commodity sectors, the directive also defines thermal/climatic conditions of use, mechanical stress conditions as the magnitude of vibrations and shocks, and electromagnetic stress conditions in terms of radiated/radiated fields for civil or industrial applications.

Certifications and marking

A product to be MID certified therefore must be both built and verified according to stringent quality criteria. Certifications always consist of a basic document consisting essentially of a type test (Annex B) to which is added a test report that can be prepared in different ways depending on the manufacturer’s possibility: test report prepared by MID d accredited third-party laboratory (Annex F), declaration of conformity based on quality assurance of the production and testing process (Annex D), quality designation of the production unit (Annex H1). The MID introduces an additional metrology marking to go along with the CE marking.

To be MID-compliant, the meter must first comply with the CE standard, then have evidence on the product label of the marking. The substantive information on the marking is the year of certification, the entity identifier with the reference of the type certification file, and the identification of the factory with certified production

Applicability of MID eneergy counters

The application of MID meters is necessary for energy production metering (e.g., photovoltaic, wind, hydroelectric, biomass plants) or in the presence of commercial transactions linked to the actual measurement of energy consumption and/or production such as tariffs linked to an electricity supply contract or sub- tariffing for leases of parts of real estate such as camping pitches, harbor moorings, garages, cellars, electric vehicle charging stations

In the case of not using MID-certified meters in the prescribed cases, the user could dispute their measurement and payment. According to Article 20 of Legislative Decree 22/2007, anyone who markets or puts into service instruments used for the functions stipulated in the MID directives without the appropriate markings is punishable by fines of €500 to €1,500 per instrument.

Seneca S500 Energy Counters

S500 Series DIN-format energy counters are used for energy measurement, electricity totalisation, metering and consumption allocation. Available in single-phase and three-phase versions up to 80A with selectable 1A or 5A input, the S500 Series provides bi-directional measurement on 4 quadrants for all energies and powers with display capability of up to 30 instantaneous measured parameters in three-phase models and up to 10 in single-phase models. Totalizers and instantaneous powers are displayed on large backlit LCD displays.

They are available with built-in, remote and, of course, MID-certified communication. Totalizers and instantaneous powers are shown on the LCD display. S500 meters are built in full compliance with EN 50470-1. The accuracy of active energy is referred to IEC/EN 62053-21 class 1 standard. Reactive energy accuracy is referenced to IEC/EN 62053-23 class 2.

Metrological LED is present in all energy meters. The pulse/kW ratio is set by the value of the secondary. In the case of the MID standard it does not change, in other cases it varies according to the ratio of the external CTs. The system automatically switches so as not to saturate the totalizer.