Digital power metering system

A digital power meter comprising:

• at least one sensor that senses analog electrical parameters on electricity transmission lines from an electrical power distribution system;
• at least one analog-to-digital converter that receives the analog electrical parameters from the at least one sensor and converts the analog electrical parameters to sampled data;
• at least one digital signal processing (DSP) device that performs calculations to determine power usage based on the sampled data;
• and
• a central processing unit (CPU) coupled to the at least one DSP by a serial peripheral interface (SPI) bus,
• wherein upon startup of the meter, the CPU is a master device on the SPI bus and the at least one DSP is a slave device.

A digital power meter comprising:

• at least one sensor that senses analog electrical parameters on electricity transmission lines from an electrical power distribution system;
• at least one analog-to-digital converter that receives the analog electrical parameters from the at least one sensor and converts the analog electrical parameters to sampled data;
• at least one processing device that performs calculations to determine power usage based on the sampled data and control overall operation of the meter;
• and
• a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), wherein the at least one processing device includes a plurality of processing devices, the SPI allowing one of the plurality of processing devices to become a master and the other processing devices of the plurality of processing devices to become slaves.