How we simplified smart power monitoring?

Smart power systems has been in the discussion for a while specially with the technologies like Internet of Things(IOT). A power system can be made smart in several aspects. In this article I'm looking at the power monitoring aspect of the smart energy applications. There are two aspects of power which needs to be monitored. Power consumption and generation. Most of the modern power equipment systems such as inverters and others have a mobile app linked with them which allows to see the data remotely and monitor. For example manufacturers like 阿西布朗勃法瑞公司（ABB） , SMA Solar , 华为数字能源 , Solis & almost everyone has this feature now. Even if there are mobile apps, inherent problems with current systems has created bottlenecks for industry.

• Scalable and customizable data visualizations
• Integrating multiple systems and devices from different vendors for a single platform
• Develop monitoring dashboards to suit organizational needs
• Further analysis using historical data

This is where we developed ThingsNode IoT gateway to address the above problems by providing a solution as a vendor neutral, platform neutral, scalable platform for power monitoring applications. ThingsNode is developed as a generic IoT gateway which can connect any sensor data to any system online or cloud.

Most of the modern power analyzers have modbus protocol compatibility, we can directly connect or connect several power analyzers in a loop to ThingsNode IoT gateway. We have used ThingsNode with power analyzer brands like 施耐德电气 , 西门子 , Kinko green series & others. ThingsNode has Wifi communication medium as default option but has 2G, 4G options based on customer requirement.

The dashboard can visualize any parameter which can be captured from the system such as Power, Voltage, Phase, Reactive Power etc. As any calculation can happen in the cloud side, any other parameters such as KPIs can be calculated based on given parameters. An example would be the amount of money generated through solar power installations.

This solution needs to connect three parts mainly. The power analyzer/inverter, ThingsNode and the cloud platform. The solution has below features.

• Realtime visibility of data
• Customizable and scalable dashboards according to customer requirement
• Easy and quick deployment (plug & play) with minimum maintenance cost
• Supports any brand of devices and platforms (Needs modbus protocol support)
• Multiple devices can be connected to the gateway
• Communication medium to the cloud with Wifi or 2G medium

Solution Architecture is simple,

The dashboard provided is a cloud hosted dashboarding solution using ThingsBoard . The customer will have additional features below from the dashboard functions of the solution.

• Alerts and alarm generation
• Visual presentation with maps and locations
• Representing data in hierarchy for multiple locations and facilities or departments
• Admin and user access levels and privilege levels can be defined
• Data can be transferred to any third party system or cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) , Microsoft Azure Cloud etc.

These smart energy monitoring can be equally implemented for generation and consumption. Some of the advantages of using smart energy monitoring are,

• Alerting and alarm generation in case of an issue in power metrics such as Power, Voltage, Current, Phase etc.
• Cost optimization based on consumption and generation
• Management calculations such as carbon emission, efficiency of solar systems etc.
• Identify the areas which require maintenance and preventive actions
• Analyze patterns and develop data models

These smart energy monitoring applications can be applied in multiple industries such as manufacturing, renewable energy, Building complex maintenance, Power plants and etc. This versatile nature of this solution makes it a perfect solution for different industry verticals to introduce reliable and scalable solutions with real time view on data.

More details about ThingsNode can be found on?https://thingsnode.cc/

This is how we simplified the smart energy monitoring.