Energy Monitoring

[Umbelina Baublitz]

HiAll,

I wanted to ask the brains trust if anyone has implemented Ignition SCADA as an Energy Management System.

I work in healthcare and have been tasked with the upgrade of the EMS from two old EMS solutions to a singular solution. We have hundreds of meters (Over 600 all modbus RTU with gateways), plus hundreds of modbus points to be read from other control systems, but not many setpoints to be changed.

My question is, does anyone have any experience in implementing the system as an EMS, is it better to use an EMS solution from a company such as Schneider? (Upper management do not like Schneiders product offerings as they are not modular enough).

Thanks everyone.

It is still not awarded to anyone. Of course Schneider is one of the bidders! Chances are 50-50 if Ignition can beat Schneider in price and features! Schneider has an advantage of having to integrate their own energy meters and purpose built AI reports! In Ignition we have to build it from ground up! But it will be a break thru if we can build it on Ignition.

If only Modbus is required and no Power Quality information is necessary, then developing the device profiles in Ignition should not be a big deal, but if you are using Schneider meters then you could loose all the Power Quality capabilities analysis they have. Depending on the type of meter, you could have waveform captures and events analysis that is proprietary to Schneider and their software can download. We have worked with both Ignition and Schneider solutions on different energy management solutions, they both could get the job done depending on the needs. Another difference is that Schneider's has a lot of pre-defined IEEE electrical analysis reports and PQ reports, again if this is important to your hospital, then it might be a combination of both softwares what could help achieve your outcomes. Another component that hospitals utilize, and you could consider, is automated emergency and standby power systems testing. Hospitals are required to exercise gens for 30 mins with 30% load, at least once a month to determine their reliability. The backup supply system operates on a low-voltage section of the electrical network, it will usually include several ATSs, generators, gen temperatures, etc., again depending on the types of meters, and if PQ analysis is important, then you would decide for one or the other. Do you require sustainability metrics and reporting, which could require GRI302 reporting, IEEE reporting, etc, etc. Several factors to consider to decide what software would be beneficial. Data acquisition is not the real challenge, what gives you the most "energy management" analysis would be.

Hi Andries, With right knowledge and right design it would not take that much. for me it took more time, as I was new to Ignition that time and with very basic knowledge about DB, Python and Ignition modules.

Hi Shankar,

I got collected all data from meters to DB in using transaction groups as per my logging intervals. Many people put data directly to Historian. After Data availability, write a python script for data sorting in groups of days weeks and hours.

This looks great.

I am trying to pull data from MySQL historian to display bar chart just to compare data between this month and last month.

Can you advise me how to do that, as im very new to ignition Scada.

Ps, i do not have the transcation groups configured.

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ZWave:

I have four of Aeotec Smart Switch 7 (F-plug). Cannot say anything bad. But few extra features are a bit awkward: button color can be changed and stored. but can be applied only to the current state [so you need to set it to the state that you want to apply color to first]; parameter 92 "report energy by threshold" seem to have an issue [Aeotec support team is investigating the case. Expexted to be fixed in the next fw update]

What you have to remember is power reporting can be a very chatty. On lower bandwith networks like Zwave that can create problems. You want it to report only up to what you need to accomplish your goal and no more.

Yeah, so I have a couple devices in my bedroom that are controlled by IR for activation (a fan, a TV, etc) which cannot send any feedback to Hubitat about whether that device is on or not, so I wanted to be able to use the current draw from the device as a method of Hubitat being able to determine whether that device currently is On or Off.

Regarding Aeotect Smart Switch in the context of your goal:

For this device amperage control parameter represents a level that is when crossed by currently measured value (not the delta from the last value) triggers meter report. It can be used for the purpose if hooked device amperage level is not fluctuatin heavily (heavy fluctuation might cause ZWave spam). Minimum level to test against is 100mA with step of 100mA (equals to 23W on 230V electric network). Periodic reports are also possible but minimum rate is 600S (10 minutes). So I assume periodic reports are not an option for you with this device.

Shelly plus/pro products (I suspect it's a common behavior) send all measurements once a minute. It is significantly better than the "10 minutes" from SS7. Shelly devices don't have options to control that. I have no info on how precise amperage meter is. But I can assume it is atleast around 120mA (Can't find it in spec. So assuming accuracy of 1% from the maximum current of 12A).

Shelly devices have a local scripting capability. So it is possible to script/program the device to send you an event or a report at custom conditions (a bit sophisticated but quite flexible approach).

You would likely want the Zen04 or Zen25(Not exactly recommending zen25 though). Basically, you need to know the load of your devices to determine on/off for what you want detect, and also minimize reporting. It needs to be a high enough number that it won't be triggered by normal use, but low enough it will trigger a report soon after the device is powered on.

With my Zen25 for instance I have it set to report every 75 watts. This works well and generally minimizes reporting since my TV generally maxes out around 140-150 Watts and fluctuates about 30-40 watts while in use.

If you set them two low you can cause allot of continuous reporting. For testing one day I set that Zen25 to report on something stupid like every 2 watts and it blew up the zwave network. I was seeing 4-8 calls a second and it quickly made the network unhealthy.

After you think you have it set properly review the config values to make sure they are set the way you want them. I think part of the problem with the Zen25 device has been folks configure it and for whatever reason the settings are not what they expect them to be.

I have been getting LimitExceededException's for a few weeks now and being kinda new at this I finally went to Log->Device Stats and looked at "Count" and "% of busy". I have some real active devices like Ecobee but my ThjirdReality Smart Plug Gen2 beats it out for both count and % !! I was thinking that maybe I need to go to a different metered plug and started looking in the community posts for recommendations. It sure seems that all these type of plugs are chatty and need a little tuning... which I will do as soon as I get this post done. The only thing I use this plug for is a fan that is plugged into it that I monitor and its on/off state triggers an automation. So, I don't need anything fancy and If someone has a recommendation as to the least chatty plug I sure would appreciate it.

I no longer have the logging for this error for the ThirdReality anymore... I booted up with the option to redue the DB and clear the logs... sorry. But I believe when this error is caused it effects lots of automations. From a fresh reboot it takes 12 hours or so to start with this error and it shows up on sendEvent() and sendLocationEvent(), etc.

The last entry corresponds to the original TR plug that I was using and swapped it out for the first entry which is a 2nd TR plug that I purchased. Both, when active, have about the same performance characteristics. This represents pre-tuning and I will put up a post-tuning a little later. The stats above reflect about an hour of running after reboot.

I ran two of the TR plugs for about 2 months with holiday lights and had no issues. Yes they were the most chatty devices I had but Zigbee can usually tolerate it. Updating the firmware to the newest greatly reduces the number of messages they send.

I wish I had the report to all those exceptions... this is the only one I had by virtue of copying it from a prior post. This particular one points to (In the App) a sendLocationEvent(). I have had others that are not App: related but Dev: related. When I go to the line in the Dev: it shows sendEvent(). The source of the Exception is always one or the other. I believe once this condition is caused it will never clear up and I have had to reboot.

You may want to sort both the devices and app stats by Total events, Hub Actions and Pending Events. Something is jamming up the event queue from the looks of it. Possibly the Ecobee stuff, looks like that is a lot of events for only an 3 hours.

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