Power/Energy Meters and Remote monitoring
Power Meters are devices that measure the amount electricity consumed by a business, residence or an electrically powered device. These devices are typically used by energy distribution companies to measure the amount of power consumed by customers and to bill them accordingly. Power meters are also being increasingly used in sub-metering applications, this is typical in a scenario where there are several sub-users (for example sub-tenants of a large apartment) and it is required to determine the use of each sub user.
The most common unit of measurement on the electricity meter is the kilowatt hour [kWh], which is equal to the amount of energy used by a load of one kilowatt over a period of one hour, or 3,600,000 joules. Power Meters can also measure several other current and voltage parameters.
Power meters typically come with a serial (or Ethernet) interface for communication. This could be a Modbus, BACnet or sometimes a Lonworks interface. We can read data from the meters using this interface and hence this interface enables 'remote monitoring' of the meters. In other words we can remotely read data from the energy meters without physically looking at the dial.
Integration of Power Meters with Building Management systems:
Building Management systems enable monitoring and control of all the equipment on a site on a single console. These systems are typically on BACnet IP. Generally it is required to integrate the Power meters installed on a site with the Building Management system for monitoring, historical data capture and control purposes. ProtoConvert can provide solutions to enable this integration. A typical example is Schneider ION power meters which support only Modbus and these meters typically need to be integrated with Building management systems on BACnet.
How can ProtoConvert help you with integration of Power Meters?
1) ProtoConvert's gateways for integration of Power Meters with your Building Management System:
Our gateways can provide a transparent communication channel so that your Building Management system (BMS) can read data from the Power meters installed on the site. Typically BMS support ethernet based protocols like BACnet IP or Modbus TCP while the power/energy meters support serial protocols like BACnet MSTP, Modbus RTU or Lonworks. Hence the BMS cannot directly read data from the meters and there is a requirement for an intermediate 'protocol' converter.
We can provide a suitable protocol converter for your integration requirement. We will also help you commission our gateway on site and be your integration partner.
2) Remote monitoring of Power/energy meters and data availability via GSM/GPRS and SMS alerts
Would you like to have access to your power meter data on the go? Would you like email/SMS alerts based on consumption (or any other parameter)?
If your answer is yes, then we have the right solutions for you. Using our Netbiter suite of products we can push all the energy/power meter data onto our cloud based servers. Hence you can access your site's data from anywhere in the world using any web browser and internet.
Our GSM/GPRS gateways can provide SMS and email alerts based on live readings from the meters installed on site.
3) SCADA/HMI for monitoring and control:
Our BlackDiamond SCADA/HMI can provide a single console monitoring and control solution for your requirement. We can display data from all the power meters on site on a single console. It would also be possible to store data for future analysis, view trend screens for live data or for historical data and generate reports.
The monitor screen on the SCADA will look like one that i shown below:
Trends and historical data can also be created on the SCADA. Which can be customized to the number of parameter trend screen needs to monitor.
