Acrel: Energy meters, power monitoring and electrical safety for user-side power systems

Overview

Acrel started in Shanghai in 2003 as Shanghai Acrel Electric and built its first production base the following year. Its company timeline traces the business from panel meters such as the ACR320E network power meter, a Shanghai key new product in 2006, through an excellent product award for the Beijing 2008 Olympic project, to its listing on the ChiNext board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in January 2012.

The company describes its focus as energy efficiency management and electrical safety on the user side of the meter: the low-voltage switchboards, distribution panels and circuits inside factories, buildings, hospitals and data centres, rather than utility revenue metering. Its Chinese company page frames the range as a cloud, edge and device stack, with meters and sensors at the bottom, gateways in the middle and the AcrelEMS platform on top.

What sets Acrel apart from many Chinese meter makers selling abroad is the breadth of one catalogue. A single supplier covers current transformers, DIN-rail and panel meters, DC meters for solar and battery circuits, wireless meters, motor and feeder protection relays, residual current relays and medical isolated power systems. For an integrator that breadth reduces the number of vendors on a project, though the depth of English documentation varies from product to product.

Offering

The English product catalogue groups the hardware into six families.

Energy meters

DIN-rail meters run from the single-phase ADL10-E and ADL200 to the three-phase ADL400 and ADL3000. Multi-circuit meters such as the ADL400M and AMC16Z measure several feeders from one device. Panel meters include the AMC96L, PZ80L and APM800 series. DC meters such as the PZ72(L)-DE and DJSF1352-RN serve solar strings, batteries and charging. Wireless meters, including the ADW300, carry cellular or LoRa radios. Prepayment meters complete the range.

Sensors, protection and safety

The AKH-0.66 family covers solid and split-core current transformers, alongside Hall-effect sensors and DC shunts. Protection products include the ARD motor protection relay, AM feeder relays and ASJ residual current relays. The electrical safety line covers insulation monitoring for DC systems and hospital isolated power panels.

Gateways and software

The AWT100 converter and ACCU-100 microgrid controller connect field devices to software. The company's platforms are AcrelEMS 2.0, AcrelEMS 3.0 and the EIOT IoT platform; the English site also lists the Acrel-2000ES storage and Acrel-2000MG microgrid energy management systems. Hardware is sold per unit through distributors and direct sales; the platforms are sold as project systems, mostly in China.

Technology

Most Acrel wired meters communicate over RS-485 with Modbus RTU. The ADL400 page lists class 0.5 active energy, voltage, current, power, power factor, frequency and harmonics from the 2nd to the 31st order, with a /F option adding multiple tariffs and demand records. Its installation manual publishes the Modbus RTU address list, including a floating-point register block, which makes the meter straightforward to map in a third-party controller.

The ADW300 moves the communications into an interchangeable module: 4G, Wi-Fi, LoRa, LoRaWAN in the EU868, US915 and AS923 bands, or RS-485 Modbus RTU. It takes 333 mV current transformers or Rogowski coils, so the sensor choice is part of the order. Class 0.5S accuracy is stated for active energy.

For collection, the IoT platform page describes the AWT100 converter with RS-485 on the field side and 4G, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, LoRa or LoRaWAN upstream, sending data to a platform over MQTT, TCP or HTTP. The English site does not publish the platform APIs or data schemas.

On approvals, an SGS report under the Measuring Instruments Directive (module B, August 2021) covers the ADL400, and the Jiangsu Acrel factory page lists MID for the ADL200, UL for the ADL3000 and AKH-0.66 split-core CTs, and a CNAS-accredited test laboratory. The group holds ISO 27001 for information security, but publishes no product security documentation for its gateways or cloud platforms.

Markets

Acrel is overwhelmingly a domestic business. Everbright Securities' review of the 2025 results puts overseas revenue at RMB 55 million, up 24% on 2024 and about 5% of the total, with a 65.7% gross margin abroad against 46.5% for the group. The same review breaks 2025 revenue into power monitoring and substation monitoring (RMB 430 million), energy efficiency management (RMB 386 million), electricity sensors (RMB 129 million), fire and electrical safety (RMB 79 million) and enterprise microgrids (RMB 65 million).

The Chinese company page names the sectors it serves: power, environmental protection, fire safety, new energy, data centres, smart buildings, transport, municipal engineering, mining, petrochemicals, hotels, education and healthcare. Its timeline mentions a tower data acquisition project for ATC in Africa in 2020.

Abroad, Everbright describes a strategy built on Southeast Asia, extending into Europe, the Middle East and Africa through local agents and the company's own sales staff. In a July 2026 investor briefing the company named Southeast Asia, Europe and South America as its overseas focus, with local technical teams and market access certificates, and said it is developing export-limiting protection devices for distributed solar and storage. The company has opened a Singapore subsidiary, and its English site carries Turkish and Romanian versions. In Europe its MID-approved DIN-rail meters and split-core current transformers are the most visible products.

Company

Acrel Co., Ltd. (安科瑞电气股份有限公司) has its headquarters at Jiading District in Shanghai and trades on the ChiNext board under stock code 300286. Zhou Zhong has run the company since June 2003, first as general manager of Shanghai Acrel Electric and, since 2009, as chairman and general manager. A March 2024 board election notice records him as controlling shareholder and actual controller with 34.47% of the shares, 18.26% held directly and 16.21% through Shanghai Qianhang Investment. Zhu Fang, sales director from 2003, is a director and deputy general manager; Luo Yelan is a director, deputy general manager, board secretary and chief financial officer.

Manufacturing is in Jiangyin, Jiangsu, through Jiangsu Acrel Electrical Manufacturing, whose factory page gives an annual capacity of 3.5 million meters, 2 million power sensors and 10,000 energy-saving cabinets. Other subsidiaries include the Jiangsu Acrel Microgrid Research Institute (2019), an e-commerce company in Shanghai and the Singapore subsidiary. The company page reports more than 450 R&D engineers, two R&D centres, one overseas technology centre, and 499 patents and 341 software copyrights at the end of 2025.

The audited 2025 financial statements show revenue of RMB 1.094 billion (up 2.9%), net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 205 million (up 20.8%) and R&D expense of RMB 119 million; the company told investors in July 2026 that research spending runs at about 10% of revenue. Revenue fell 5.2% in 2024 before recovering. A private placement in 2025 raised net assets to RMB 2.24 billion, and a new R&D headquarters building is under construction. The company holds China's national specialised and sophisticated "Little Giant" designation, awarded in 2022.