Bitpool + EDMI Reporting Solution

EDMI are one of the most reputable and quality brands in electrical smart meters through Australia, New Zealand and now spreading globally. In Australia they are recognized as one of only a few pattern-approved meters suitable for tenant billing. They are also, unfortunately, the cause of many headaches for building system integrators. The reliability and quality of EDMI metering solutions comes at the cost of their proprietary communication protocol (Command Line). There are Modbus translator modules as an option that you can purchase for each meter, and they do work well, however when it comes to large integration projects spanning 50+ meters the costs begin to add up significantly.

Sometimes you don't even have the luxury of that option; Johnson Controls QLD recently contacted us when they heard of our newly developed EDMI driver for Niagara AX. They had a project in Far North Queensland requiring integration with 84 existing EDMI smart meters. The problem was that these meters were the older generation RS-485 command line, these days the Modbus translator units are only available for RS-232. With all the translator box requirements, the costs were getting too high and they certainly did not want to go down the route of replacing all the meters.

Using our EDMI driver, a Tridium JACE controller and our Bitpool data platform we were able to provide a highly cost-effective solution that ticked all the boxes, allowing JCI to focus on what they do best, without the hassle of complicated integration.

Because these meters had been installed and logging data since 2013, one of the key advantages to our solution was the ability to retrieve these logs (referred to as Load Surveys) using a History Import into AX. This allows the end user to use the new system without any loss in records.

Johnson Controls were also able to utilise the data we were reading from these meters. Since this solution is on the Niagara AX platform, points can be mapped into any other system supported by the Niagara framework. In this case, we exported the EDMI points to BACnet for JCI to read into their Metasys BMS.

After uploading history data into Bitpool, we then made dashboards as shown to visualise and present this information. The end client was given logins to allow viewing of this consumption data from anywhere and anytime. No more painful remote connections or special software to view the info, just open up a web browser.

The previous metering solution had the EDMI meters logging After Hours AC requests using the pulse inputs. By importing those logs the same way that we imported consumption data we were able to produce After Hour Usage reports as shown.

The consumption data was also used for producing similar meter read reports as shown. These reports are generated in our Bitpool cloud service and can be configured for automatic email on a schedule.

If you have a similar requirement for your project, or interested in more information, feel free to message me or send an enquiry to [email protected].