A Flexible Data Acquisition System for Energy Information

Guan Wah Ung

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798. (now with Water Supply Network, Public Utilities Board, Singapore) Email: ungg0002@ntu.edu.sg

Peng Hin Lee

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798. Email: ephlee@ntu.edu.sg

Liang Mong Koh

Schneider Electric Singapore Pte Ltd 10, Ang Mo Kio Street 65, 02-17/20, TechPoint, Singapore 569059. Email: Liang-Mong.Koh@sg.schneider-electric.com

Fook Hoong Choo

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798. Email: efhchoo@ntu.edu.sg

AbstractThis paper proposes a system for the monitoring and data acquisition of information that are associated with the energy consumed by an equipment or facility. The acquired data are stored in a relational database and can be retrieved for further processing and analysis by the energy management personnel. Various scheduler functions can be carried out to ease the tasks of energy management for the facility. The proposed system is integrated with a programmable logic controller for the monitoring and control of equipment. The status of the equipment are displayed through a SCADA platform to provide a visual interface for the operator. Through the mobile phones Short Message Service (SMS) function, an online condition-based maintenance monitoring alert function is provided. Alarm signals from faulty equipment or plant malfunctions and command signals as SMS messages sent by the user is routed through the system and the PLC, thereby allowing remote communications among the equipment and the user.

Keywords : Data acquisition, energy management system, programmable logic controller, energy consumptions measurements, energy audit. I. I NTRODUCTION With the rising oil prices and increasing electrical tariffs charged by the electric utilities companies, electricitydependent industries are faced with the challenges of minimizing or reducing the electricity bills while at the same time not sacricing performance and human comfort. Due to the increasing competitive nature of conducting businesses, many companies have found it worthwhile to invest in some form of energy management system to monitor energy usage and trend energy consumption patterns in their facilities as a means to reduce business costs through the identications and implementations of energy savings projects. These efforts would also lead to the reduction of the emissions of greenhouse gases that is a major contributing factor to global warming. In addition, the interest in green buildings for a sustainable environment has also increased signicantly in many countries such as North America, Europe and Asia. Many governments

are encouraging the use of renewable sources of energy and assist companies to reduce the energy costs. In Singapore, for existing buildings, part of the costs of replacing inefcient equipment such as old inefcient chillers and replacing them with more energy efcient ones can be absorbed by the government. New building owners are also encouraged with subsidies to incorporate energy efcient, environmental friendly and sustainable features into the design and constructions of the new buildings. Electrical energy is needed in every households and buildings that require heating, cooling and lighting. In commercial buildings, the lighting system, the HVAC system and lift operations are areas that consume very signicant amount of energy. A major part of the electricity bills is due to the need to operate motors and compressors in the industries. Energy efcient operations and energy consumptions are important considerations in an energy efcient environment and this can be established by measurements with an energy monitoring and management system. Such a system promotes the economical operations of the equipment in the facility and is useful for energy audits purposes ([1], [2]) as it facilitates the identications of energy savings opportunities. Over the years, signicant changes have taken place in the way the energy consumptions are being measured, whether at home or in the industries, see e.g. ([3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]) Different means in the acquisition of the energy information have been described. In [9], the application of wireless sensors networks to a plant energy managements system is adopted, replacing wired systems formed by communication cables and sensors. Some research work on the development of an energy management system based on using the electric utilities power lines for the transmission of data were reported in [10]. Others, such as, Young et al. [11] proposed a universal serial bus approach, Chung et al. [12] utilized the zig-bee technology and Sabat et al. [13] adopted an neural network approach for data acquisitions. Energy conservations efforts were also seen

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to be implemented in some campuses. For example, a low cost power monitoring system using the Rogowski coil is described in Jansson et al. [14] and Nagata [15] described an electric power energy monitoring system using the Internet for the monitoring of energy consumptions in a campus. In [16], a portable three phase energy consumption acquisition system is proposed. It consists of a notebook, clamp-on ammeters, data acquisition card and signal interfaces to analyze the energy consumption in the authors university and to identify energy waste areas. A relatively low cost and exible data acquisition system that is integrated with real time data logging capability and control functions is described in this paper. In the oil and gas industries, LabVIEW-based data acquisition systems with reports generation capabilities are carried out with advanced and accurate ow meters for measurements so that customers are billed according to the actual amount of gas or oil that they bought from the supplier. The proposed system described here is similar to the LabVIEW-based systems in the oil and gas industries with respect to the necessity of parameters sensing, data acquisitions and report generations, except that the main focus here is on energy monitoring, energy management and control. The proposed system uses the iFix SCADA software [17] as a software platform for development of a user friendly graphical interface and data acquisition system for energy managements. It is integrated with data logging features and capable of consumptions and trends reports generations. Sensors are connected to the system to monitor environmental factors such as temperature and humidity. Other types of sensors can also be easily connected to the available I/O ports for a more comprehensive monitoring system. The system acquires the energy and relevant parameters information from power meters and sensors that are connected to the system. Besides the acquisition of energy information, a control function via a PLC connected to the system is also demonstrated. Applications functions are developed in programming languages such as VB.Net and visual basic to monitor the equipments status in real time, whether it is in an alarm state or in a normal functioning state. These functions could allow the plant management to take correction actions, if necessary. Remote monitoring and control is possible with the use of the Short Message Service (SMS) function found in mobile phones. Alarms text messages can be sent out to alert the responsible personnel of possible faulty equipment or when a situation requires attention. The text messages can be sent directly to any mobile phone in the event of, for example, an overow, pump failure, link error, etc. The authorized user can initiates corrective actions from a remote location via text messages and SMS alerts with a mobile phone. For example, in the manipulation of temperature, there are several remedial actions possibilities such as the switching on of a fan, resetting the circuit breakers, shutting down the air-conditioner or even modifying the fan speed. The authorized user is also able to receive accurate reports on the performance of the plant or equipment via SMS. The capability to receive alerts and relay commands via text messaging and SMS commands makes the

system cost effective as there is no additional expenditure for specic controller devices. It allows the users to be in control even when they are away from the plant. The alarm alerts and command signals are routed through the system. Using the scheduler functions developed, the system can performs the switching of the lighting, air-conditioners and equipment to their desired states at the pre-dened timings with the aim of energy conservation. Various communication methods are put in place to carry out the information monitoring and acquisition. For example, a wireless communication module was built for areas where the laying of cables or hard wiring is not feasible. In the system developed, a total of 137 relevant system parameters are to be read from the power meters, sensors and the simulated equipment components such as air handling units, lifts and fans connected to the system via the PLC. The acquired energy information is stored in a relational database and the data can be extracted to generate daily, weekly or monthly reports for analysis. In the next section, the system developed is discussed in details and Section three concludes the paper. II. S YSTEM D ESIGN In this section, the design of the proposed system for data acquisition of energy information is discussed. A. Design Considerations From the viewpoint of energy managements, the main design consideration is that energy information should be able to be monitored and acquired by the system. In addition, to demonstrate the control function, a PLC is integrated to the system and is to be programmed to perform simple control functions such as the simple switching ON-OFF functions of devices. The communication protocols that the various devices employed need to be known so that the appropriate interfaces could be designed. The system developed must also have user-friendly graphical interface so that users of the proposed system can operate it without much technical difculties. The following main equipments are used in the system developed:

QuadStar power meters with Modbus protocol Temperature and humidity sensors with electrical signal outputs Signal converters including wireless and Ethernet types Analog input module with Modbus protocol Omron PLC

B. System Design and Architecture The architecture of the data acquisition system is as shown in Figure 1. It showed the communication links between the single host PC and the various devices and equipment. Most of the equipment have serial communications and as the serial ports on the PC is limited, some of the acquired signals are converted to Ethernet and/or wireless signals using signal converters.

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Fig. 1.

Architecture of system.

C. System and Reporting structure The system acquires the required information through the I/O communication drivers, which will poll and request information from the external devices. The data are stored in a database and are to be displayed in numerical or graphical animations for the users. The iFix SCADA software [17] is used as the software platform for the designs of the graphical user interface and the data acquisition part of the system. Reports, such as energy consumptions trends, based on the data collected can be easily created by the Visual Basic for Application software that is embedded in the iFix SCADA software. The data stored in the relational database can be used to generate Web reports using the Microsoft SQL Reporting Services package. In this way, the energy information or other data can be retrieved through the Internet almost anywhere in the world. The reports can also be used for verication or to dispute the bills sent by the electric utilities company. A diagnostic report on the working conditions of the various equipments used can also be generated for the user. Figure 2 show the reporting system architecture. D. Schedulers A scheduler application function was set up to demonstrate the tasks of energy managements in the facility. a) Lighting scheduler. Lighting can be scheduled to be switched ON or OFF at pre-dened times. The scheduler, see gure 3, makes use of the time-based triggered event function in the visual basic script. Upon reaching the user pre-dened time, the script function will send a signal to the PLC controller to set the lighting to the respective ON/OFF status. In this way, energy costs can be minimized. b) Transfer data scheduler. This scheduler transfers the acquired data into a relational database using the Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition. However, due to the limited

Fig. 2.

Reporting system architecture

Fig. 3.

Light Scheduler Conguration

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data storage size, regular maintenance, for e.g. at half yearly intervals, may be required. c) Reports scheduler. The purpose of this scheduler is to generate reports such as trend charts from the historical data that have been acquired. These reports can be used by the energy management team to identify possible energy savings opportunities. Another example of the use of this scheduler is that the reports generated can serve as part of the billing reports to different vendors, for the case of a building which is occupied by many vendors. To generate the reports, upon a time triggered event, the system will automatically request for the desired data that are stored in the relational database and have them recorded onto an Excel spreadsheet. As the Excel spreadsheet is rst designed as a template report, once the data are recorded in the cells, the required charts as shown in gure 4 will be generated and they can be saved into the system. E. Additional useful features of the proposed system The proposed system also consists of the following customized applications: The SCADA driver function is customized to handle the on-demand scanning of the equipments that are connected to the system for monitoring. The Source Connector allows connecting to a devices report-data upon request at the relational database. It retrieves the devices historical data from the Historian Database, summarized them and then archived it to the a Relational Database server. It also checked whether the devices parameters are within the set tolerance limits. The validity signal will be given based on the tolerance limit and the logics are based on the tolerance limits that can be developed by any programming tool. F. Remote monitoring and control The remote monitoring and control of equipments can be demonstrated through the use of a mobile phones SMS function (see gure 5) . Alarms alerts from a faulty equipment and command signals sent by the user via SMS are routed through the system and the PLC. The application makes use of a GSM modem to send and receive the SMS messages and the decoded SMS message allow the user to control or check on the equipment or certain functions of the plant. When a user receives the alert message, he can either send an acknowledge message back to the system or he can send an action SMS message to the system to control the respective devices and carry the appropriate actions to be taken. In this way, the user can choose to rectify the problem even before he arrives at the site station or he could just simply acknowledge the alarms if it is known to be not a result of a serious problem. G. System salient features The salient features of the proposed system are as follows: Feasibility of project planning and development Integrated software wizard Able to integrate with other systems

Standard programming languages (VBA,VB, C++, etc) for easy programming Support generation of online web billing reports, maintenance reports and equipment faults reports Support embedded custom activeX control Support SQL query by other systems Runtime changes on site Support data browsing remotely via GSM modem Monitor equipment status locally and remotely

H. Discussions New changes or developments can be achieved via the software evaluation mode which supports all the functionality of the system. The system can contain customized modules that allow developers to key in new indexes for new equipment and this will then automatically creates a whole new set of graphics, database, etc, if there are changes to the system to be monitored. The system uses the Visual Basic for Application (VBA) which is a standard embedded programming platform that acknowledges all the open standard protocols or any customised protocols if known. The system interfaces can be connected to the web servers, relational database, etc, by making use of the standard internet information services and customized driver toolkit for congurations and developments. Furthermore, the relational database servers that are connected to the system can have imported stored procedures that can be programmed to run at pre-dened intervals to check for any inactive activities. The inactive monitoring points may be disabled, if required. All the features that are described above may not be found in other existing systems in the market and additional costs will be incurred for the systems to integrate all these features. If maintenance is required, the need to seek expertise assistance from different platform developers is avoided as there is only one platform used in our proposed system. In this sense, the maintenance time required will be shorter. III. C ONCLUSIONS This paper presents a system for the data acquisition of energy information. The proposed system is exible in the sense that changes can be made to the system with relative ease. A laboratory model was set up to test the control functions of the PLC and the various sensors with the system. The system is able to log various kinds of data through different communication mediums, which allows exible accessibility to the equipment in the eld. The friendly graphical user interface developed allows the user to operate the system and at the same time monitor the status of the equipment without technical difculties. With the reports that can be easily generated, it also allows the energy management team to analyze and implement potential energy savings measures to reduce energy cost and minimize energy consumptions. The proposed diagnostic and reporting system is still under further improvements to ensure a more accessible billing system and to be tested in the eld in future.

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Action Reply Alert Message

Data Query

Fig. 4.

Samples of charts and data reports

Fig. 5.

SMS Application

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