ABB Inc., a leading provider of electricity meters and system solutions throughout the world, announced the A1000 ALPHA® Meter Software, Release 1.0, with enhanced functionality, configuration and communications capabilities for the A1000 ALPHA meter. ABB developed this software in response to utilities as well as light commercial and industrial customers needing the freedom to easily upgrade and reconfigure their IEC meters in today's age of global deregulation and changing billing requirements.

The new meter software is an easy-to-use, GUI-based tool that gives full meter configuration control to the utility and allows the utility and customers to read meter data from A1000 ALPHA meters and all IEC 1107-compliant meters in lab or field environments. With this software, meters can be fully adapted for different uses and set up billing applications.

The software's Windows®-based application allows users to read meter registers, monitor meter configurations, reset maximum demand, set and change meter passwords and configure utility data, rates (or tariffs), and display settings. Toolbar and action buttons provide fast, point-and-click execution of the most commonly used configuration and retrieval functions. In addition, users can set or change testing parameters during service voltage or current tests. Billing data readings can be opened in any text editor application, such as WordPad™ or Notepad™ or imported into Microsoft® Excel™ or Lotus 1-2-3™ spreadsheets.

The new software addresses the growing worldwide use of A1000 ALPHA meters and is one of the first to provide multiple language support in Chinese, English, French, German, Hungarian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.