DENT Instruments: PowerScout multi-circuit submeters, ELITEpro loggers and current transformers

Overview

DENT Instruments has made electrical measurement equipment in Central Oregon since 1988. Its company page traces it to a home garage in the 1980s, and its founder and long-time chief engineer, Christopher Dent, ran it as a locally owned business until it was sold to the Swedish Bemsiq Group at the end of 2022. It still designs and builds its products at 925 SW Emkay Drive in Bend, and the Why DENT page presents all manufacturing as taking place in the United States.

The company built its name on two kinds of instrument. ELITEpro portable loggers are the field tools energy auditors and measurement and verification engineers clamp onto a panel for a few weeks to profile a load. PowerScout meters are the permanent version: networked submeters that sit in a panel and report to a building management system, a data logger or an energy management controller, leaving storage and analysis to the receiving system.

The PowerScout line is where DENT differs most from single-point meter makers. A PowerScout 48HD or FLEX 48 measures 48 current channels from one enclosure, so a whole lighting or tenant panel can be submetered with one device and one network address range rather than a meter per circuit. Current comes from external 333 mV current transformers or flexible RoCoil Rogowski coils, which DENT also makes, so the meter never carries load current and can be fitted to existing panels without breaking conductors.

Offering

PowerScout submeters

The current range is PowerScout FLEX, which DENT calls the next evolution of the PowerScout HD platform. It comes in FLEX 3, 12, 24 and 48 models; the FLEX 48 meters up to 16 three-phase or 48 single-phase circuits, and DENT's FLEXPoint software groups channels into virtual meters. A distributor listing gives the FLEX 48 an MSRP of US$3,392 and describes it as the replacement for the PowerScout HD.

PowerScout HD stays on sale for existing installations in 3, 12, 24 and 48 channel models, in a case, on a plate or (the 3 HD) on DIN rail, with options for a display, California Type Evaluation Program (CTEP) approval, time-of-use registers or DENTCloud. Its published part builder lists prices from US$851 for a PS3HD on DIN rail to US$4,007 for a cloud-enabled PS48HD.

The three-channel PowerScout 3037, launched in September 2014 to replace the PowerScout 3 Plus, is now on the legacy products page with its datasheet, manual and BACnet PICS.

Loggers, sensors and software

The ELITEpro XC logs four channels on single- and three-phase systems from 0 to 5,000 A, line-powered with USB and Ethernet, for load profiling, energy audits and measurement and verification. The current transformer range covers split-core CTs from 5 A to 1,000 A in standard (0.5 to 1%) and revenue-grade (better than 0.2% ratio error) versions, the 150 A EZ Clamp and RoCoil flexible coils. DENTCloud, ordered as a meter option, gives remote access to readings from cloud-enabled PowerScout meters.

Technology

The PowerScout HD operator's guide (July 2023) documents a meter built for integration. Every model has RS-485 running Modbus RTU or BACnet MS/TP, Ethernet running Modbus TCP on port 502 or BACnet/IP, and USB for setup with DENT's ViewPoint software. Serial speeds run from 9,600 to 115,200 baud, each meter is a 1/8 unit load, and cable runs reach 1,200 m. Accuracy is 0.2% to ANSI C12.20-2015 Class 0.2, the meter samples at 1.8 kHz, updates every second and stores 15-minute energy intervals for 63 days.

Multi-circuit metering is organised in elements: a PS48HD has sixteen, each answering at its own Modbus address above the meter's base address, and each set to a three-phase or single-phase service in software. The published register list carries a SunSpec model 213 block, which lets SunSpec-aware clients discover the meter's three-phase measurements, alongside DENT's own floating-point registers. Configuration, command and PIN registers are separate from the measurement map.

The older PowerScout 3037 uses a different, scaled-integer register map with a data scalar register, and also offers Modbus RTU or BACnet MS/TP on RS-485 and Modbus TCP or BACnet/IP on its Ethernet model; its manual includes an emulation of the Veris H8035/H8036 register layout for systems written for those meters. In 2016 DENT and Emerson paired the 3037 with Emerson's WirelessHART radio for process plants, as EBMag reported.

The PS48HD is BTL listed as a BACnet Smart Sensor at firmware 1.018d. The HD is certified to UL 61010-1 and CSA C22.2 No. 61010-1 and CE marked, and the FLEX 48 is UL listed under file E186827 and rated ANSI C12.1-2024 Class 0.2 with suitable CTs, according to its distributor.

Markets

Latour's acquisition announcement describes DENT's customers as worldwide, in energy services, solar energy, office and residential buildings, telecommunications and electric vehicle charging. The product range fits that list: PowerScout meters for permanent tenant, circuit and solar submetering, ELITEpro loggers for the audits and measurement and verification studies energy service companies run before and after a retrofit.

In practice the business is North American. PowerScout HD meters measure 90 to 346 V line to neutral and 600 V line to line and carry UL, CSA and ANSI approvals; CTEP approval options serve California's type-evaluation requirements, and distributors describe the FLEX 48 as compliant with the Buy American Act and TAA for US public procurement. DENT publishes US dollar list prices and sells through distributors and its own DENT Partner Network, as well as its online shop.

Partnerships with larger controls manufacturers have extended its reach. In 2014 DENT signed a joint development agreement with Setra Systems to develop energy measurement and management instrumentation, and in 2016 it worked with Emerson to put a PowerScout meter on WirelessHART mesh networks, with trial units supplied through Emerson's Therm-O-Disc business. Within the Bemsiq Group, which sells building automation and power metering in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia according to The Source Weekly, the purchase was presented as the way into North American metering.

Company

DENT Instruments, Inc. was founded in 1988 and is based at 925 SW Emkay Drive in Bend, Oregon, where it has its head office and manufacturing. A 2014 Cascade Business News item described it as locally owned and managed, with Christopher Dent as president.

On 27 December 2022 the Swedish investment company Investment AB Latour announced that its wholly owned subsidiary Bemsiq AB had acquired DENT. Latour estimated DENT's 2022 revenue at US$15 million, with a profit margin well above Latour's financial target, and gave Bemsiq, based in Gothenburg, about 500 employees and SEK 1.3 billion of annual turnover. Bemsiq's chief executive, Mikael Johnsson Albrektsson, said the purchase strengthened the group's metering business and its growth strategy in North America. Realtid put the expected revenue at about SEK 157 million. No purchase price was published, and DENT's header logo now reads "Part of Bemsiq Group".

In October 2023 Jonas Greberg became chief executive, and Christopher Dent stepped down from management to stay on as senior advisor, The Source Weekly reported. The company page names Brent Poole (operations), Kevin McConnell (engineering), Mary Barlow (finance and HR), Brian Kausler (product management) and Bob Hutton (sales and marketing) as directors. The company holds ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 certificates for 2025 to 2028, and its sustainability page says its science-based emissions targets were validated by the Science Based Targets initiative in 2025, with quarterly ESG reporting to the group. Headcount is not published.