Badger Meter ORION AMR/AMI Hardware Solutions for Gas Utilities - Manual (Page 12)

Step 6: Determine the Fixed Pressure Factor
Typical residential and commercial gas pressure at the meter is ¼ psi (or 7 inches of water column), which is the standard
pressure for billing purposes The gas meter index will have a white background to visually indicate standard pressure In
these situations, the Pressure Factor for programming purposes is 1 0000
Index with white background indicates a Pressure Factor of 1 0000
However, some utility customers receive higher pressure delivery due to requirements of certain appliances such as pool
heaters, standby generators, etc The delivered pressure to these “high pressure” customers might be 2 psi, 5 psi or higher The
utility will either adjust in the billing system for the higher pressure, or use a specially geared index that will have a distinctive
red face When the red-faced index is encountered, the Pressure Factor will be something other than 1 0000 and needs to be
determined from information on the index and meter manufacturer data
Index with red background indicates a Pressure Factor greater than 1 0000
The Pressure Factor is calculated from the following:
Pressure Factor (PF) =
Atmospheric Pressure + Line Pressure at the
Meter
Base Pressure
• Line pressure is often 2 psi, 5 psi or higher
• Atmospheric pressure is dependent on the elevation above sea level of the location of the meter itself (14 4 psi for
elevation of 500 feet above sea level)
• The base pressure is a standard value for each utility (e g , 14 65 psi or 14 73 psi)
Pressure-Compensated indexes for a specific meter have an inherent error associated with them that cannot be avoided This
error is due to the fact that the PC indexes take advantage of gears with different numbers of teeth, and therefore different
gear ratios, to make the appropriate corrections
Programming the ORION® Gas Endpoint
Page 12 July 2013