A chip card retaining mechanism for detachably retaining a chip card and allowing the chip card to be connected to terminals formed on a printed circuit board. to a center such as police station. The central recess has a substantially V-shaped cross-sectional contour having a height and a width that both increase in the fore-to-aft direction. A substation transceiver is configured for sending analog outbound messages from the utility to a consumer. When the local wireless sensor does not receive a response message from the local event processing device, the local wireless sensor encrypts the abnormal event message with a special mode key and transmits the encrypted abnormal event message to the remote event processing device.