Meter maintenance data accumulation
Lewis Rosman
In the last three years we have embarked on an ambitious campaign to eventually meter all the utilities (steam, chilled water, electricity, water) for all our buildings. Prior to this we only metered about 1/3 of them.
This has created more work physically installing them, commissioning them, and maintaining them. It has even created problems for our existing DDC system to reliably get the information to our billing servers.
Questions.
How have you addressed the increased maintenance and calibration costs and time for more meters? Do you have an instrument shop? Do you outsource it?
How do you aggregate you meter data? Do you use the DDC system? Do you have a system just for the meters? Do you outsource it?
Joe Hoose
Lewis,
Thank you for posting to the IDEA Campus Forum and sharing your thoughts. As the chairman of the “Metering and Controls” forum, I can confidently say that this has been a growing concern for at least the last decade.
I presented on the subject at the IDEA annual conference in 2012 after working with many campuses over the years and finding the same struggles. Flow, Power and Energy metering technologies are essentially microprocessors(computers) hanging on the wall and effective communication technologies with adequate robustness are equivalent to office IT. The best analogy we had for higher administration was adding 500 points of metering technology is very similar to adding 500 people with desktop stations to a building. The 500 people would require an IT person to maintain software, communications and hardware, why wouldn’t the same be required for the facilities department.
In response to your questions, I have been working with my clients on a concept called Metermetrics. For a data value orientated data collection system we find that the meters should be accessed directly by a dedicated Utility metering infrastructure. We have been able to do this seamlessly with the wide availability of campus LANs and WANs using the Ethernet backbone. We use a “BACnet to Ethernet” (or Modbus etc.) router which not only allows us to access the data directly but also allows the local BAS to access the data should it be desired for local building operators or control routines. We have also added a local web portal to some networks for data access to people without giving them access to the entire system.
By using the BACnet(or similar) communications with the meters we can gain access(assuming the manufacturer makes them available) to all the inherent data, calculations and diagnostics in the meter. With this data we can set up Fault Detection and Diagnostics(FDD) that continually evaluate the heath of the meter and the communications infrastructure from the data point all the way to the HMI reporting. This also allows you to set up proactive maintenance and trend what technologies are working and where to look for something more applicable to your applications.
I have seen many schools standardize on metering technologies that meet their applications and maintain them in house. Many meter manufactures are also now offering service plans and I have even seen lease plans where they include service and warranty throughout the contract.
I hope this helps. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you would like to discuss this further.
Best wishes,
Joseph C. Hoose
Cool Systems
Utility Generation, Distribution and Demand Side Optimization
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Campus Forum" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to campus-forum...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to campus...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/campus-forum.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
![Witt, Jeffrey D [FPM]'s profile photo](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/default-user=s40-c)
Witt, Jeffrey D [FPM]
At Iowa State University, we have all our buildings metered electrically and about 90% of our steam and chilled water loads metered. We have all auxiliary units metered for water but only 35-30% of the general fund buildings have water meters. We reached this point in metering about 5 years ago. The meters are maintained by our utility distribution staff as needed.
Our chilled water meters all report back through our JCI Metasys DDC system. Generally all other meters are read manually each month. We use a Utility Billing Module in our Facilities Maintenance Software (FAMIS) where the data is downloaded either from Metasys or from the meter reader’s handheld device. We use this Utility Billing Module to handle the billing to the campus customers. From this system we can run reports on building consumption, consumption per gsf, etc.
This is all handled in house.
If you have further questions, you can contact me.
Jeff
Jeffrey Witt, P.E.
Director, Utility Services
Facilities Planning & Management
Room 220 Power Plant, Ames, Iowa 50011-4023
Telephone: 515-294-8286
jw...@iastate.edu
Making Commitments, Keeping Commitments
From: campus...@googlegroups.com [mailto:campus...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of Lewis Rosman
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 2:32 PM
To: campus...@googlegroups.com
Subject: {Campus Forum} Meter maintenance data accumulation
In the last three years we have embarked on an ambitious campaign to eventually meter all the utilities (steam, chilled water, electricity, water) for all our buildings. Prior to this we only metered about 1/3 of them.
--
Jauch, Carl
As with everything, there are a variety of solutions. In Minneapolis, we do the following:
· All our customer buildings are metered. The legacy method was pen/plotter charts but now we have only a couple small buildings that are not on our active telemetry system.
· Meter and instrument calibration is performed in-house. We have several Instrument and Control specialists, and customers meters fall into their area of responsibility. Because we have metered all of our buildings from the outset, the cost of calibrating and maintaining the system is built into our service.
· Within each building we have a metering computer. Meter data is either recorded to a flash drive and retrieved twice a week or it is sent real time back to our plant and into our telemetry historian. We have a custom software routine to take the flash drive stored data and dump it into our historian
· Our telemetry collection and historian is separate from our plant control system, although some of the plant data is shared and stored in the telemetry historian also.
· Real time data comes back either through fiber-optic or radio as our customers are spread out over all of downtown Minneapolis. We use an OPC server to collect the data. We don’t outsource the maintenance of the telemetry system, although we do retain normal software license/support to help if an issue arises.
· We don’t bill directly from our metering telemetry as of yet. Billing is done based on manual readings of totalizers in the metering computer. This is done, not because the telemetry is unreliable, but because it gives us a presence in the customer buildings on a regular basis: to look for problems or to help the building engineers.
· Periodically, we do miss collecting some data in the historian. More often than not, the metering computer in the building is fine but for some reason the signal didn’t make it back to the plant.
I would be happy to provide additional information or assistance, should you wish.
Best regards,
Carl
|
From: campus...@googlegroups.com [mailto:campus...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of Lewis Rosman
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 2:32 PM
To: campus...@googlegroups.com
Subject: {Campus Forum} Meter maintenance data accumulation
In the last three years we have embarked on an ambitious campaign to eventually meter all the utilities (steam, chilled water, electricity, water) for all our buildings. Prior to this we only metered about 1/3 of them.
--
Len-IDEA
We currently meter about 90% of our buildings (electricity, steam, chilled water and domestic water) for a total of about 800 meters. It is challenging.
We use a PLC to convert from analog to digital then get to our historian. These diagrams (attached) show this. (FACNET is a fiber backbone on campus)
The BUMP (building utilities metering program) is basically a historian from which the billing system and web server access common data. We use an INSTEP product for billing and use INDUSOFT for the web server. This web server is a tool we use to manage the meters. We use to initially validate the meter for accuracy/consistency, record any maintenance actions taken on meters, obtain real time data for meters.
See attached screen shot of one building where energy use is rolled up from multiple meters (aggregate multiple meters).
We could not do this without Indusoft. We have about 10 guys that work on this for our campus. We do this in-house.
After vetting meters with this we then roll it up to billing where the financial relationships are defined (AUX/E&G, partial use of space, etc.)
Hope this helps
Juan Ontiveros, P.E.│Executive Director│Utilities and Energy Management.
215 E. 24th Street│Austin, TX 78712│P: 512.232.4191│F: 512.471.1904
juan.on...@austin.utexas.edu│www.utexas.edu/utilities
Rosman, Lewis L.
Thank you Juan. This helps.
Lewis
From: campus...@googlegroups.com [mailto:campus...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Len-IDEA
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 1:09 PM
To: campus...@googlegroups.com
--