Paused alarms

A paused alarm is a SmartPoint module alarm that occurs in conjunction with a smart meter or smart meter register.

Note: For Sensus meters, this includes all meters and registers post-iPERL with the exception of the original electronic register.

An alarm pauses only in the rare case when an alarm has 10 or more starts and stops within a week. Under normal conditions these alarms should never be seen.

Some smart meters have responsive alarms which transmit immediately every time the alarm is triggered and every time the condition clears. While this provides valuable and timely data, it can also send an overwhelming number of alarm messages and notifications to the system. A threshold may be set too close to the standard operating conditions, in turn causing frequent alarm reporting. When this situation occurs it can be difficult to manage in the software. To maintain the benefits of responsive, real-time alarms while reducing these potential negative impacts, sometimes a handful of meter alarms will be paused. The alarm stays paused until a user can go identify the issue or adjust the thresholds to a more applicable setting.

When a group of meter alarms are paused, the SmartPoint module stops transmitting the smart meter alarms. Instead the module transmits a SmartPoint alarm indicating that these alarms are paused. The alarms are still detected and logged in the meter, but they are not transmitted from the SmartPoint module. The Operational Alerts Paused, Pressure Alerts Paused, Temperature Alerts Paused, and Hardware Alerts Paused alarms are indications that certain groups of alarms are not currently transmitting to the RNI. Alarms will resume when an alarm reset is issued to the SmartPoint module from Device Manager or FieldLogic. The SmartPoint module transmits all meter alarms as usual after the alarms are reset.
Note: In Device Manager, alarms are referred to as alerts.