industrial IT > Monitoring Energy EMS

No one needs to be convinced how important it is for a production plant to manage its energy resources in an economical way. Companies no longer consider Energy consumed to be a fixed cost beyond their control. The rapidly increasing costs of energy media and changing legal regulations, such as the need for cyclical energy audits, force companies to pay special attention to consumption of the energy in various forms and to introduce changes in functioning and modification of technological processes ensuring energy savings. It has been understood that the energy required to make a product is one of the crucial price factors which, when minimized, significantly contributes to the company profitability while enhancing its image as an environment friendly enterprise. Failure to implement media consumption saving programs may result in an uncontrolled increase in production costs, and thus a reduction in competitiveness.

However, if you plan to optimize the consumption and reduce the energy media producing costs, it is not enough to measure the amount of energy. You also need to have a proper data acquisition and processing system which will present the data in a clear way, aggregate them and develop indicators helpful when taking organizational decisions or planning modernization leading to measurable reduction in the production costs.

In order to reduce the plant's energy consumption, the process of monitoring consumption by individual receivers should be started. For this purpose, EMS (Energy Management System) class systems are designed in accordance with the ISO 50001 standard, ensuring continuous supervision over energy consumption.

Since the expenditures necessary to implement the EMS monitoring system are relatively small when compared to the available savings, it’s the one of the best and fastest returning IT investments.


Asix Energy

The experience of ASKOM from implemented energy media management systems in the last 25 years allowed design of out-of-the box EMS-class solution based on the own Asix SCADA platform, which is characterized by unique capabilities. Asix Energy offers all the advantages of ready-made product, while allowing its free expansion with new functionalities. The user has possibility to view both information about the current state of energy media installations and their analysis at any time in the form of charts and reports. Additionally, using the power guard module, Asix provides forecasted values.

The main function of Asix Energy is monitoring of any energy carriers, such as:

• Electric energy,

• Natural gas / coal gas,

• Heat,

• High and low pressure compressed air, vacuum,

• Technical gases – hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, argon…,

• Ventilation and air conditioning, chilled water,

• Potable water, industrial water and sewage.

The basic function of Asix Energy is to read current and historical data from measuring devices and to archive and visualize them. These data are presented in an easy way on synoptic screens or control and management panels. The available wide portfolio of graphic objects such as numbers, bars, rotational indicators and charts (including the Power Guard Chart) makes it possible to tailor the presentation to a specific kind of information and consumer. Since the system supports GIS map technologies, it can present the metering of wide power networks or plants on the background of map diagrams with all their advantages (zooming in and out, adjusting the data accuracy depending on the map scale etc.).

Asix Energy clearly presents measured and processed data, supporting the process of making strategic decisions aimed at optimizing production costs. A rich set of predefined visualization graphics and dozens of reports enable advanced analysis at a low cost of implementing and maintaining the system (TCO).

Optimization of production costs

Asix Energy is an indispensable tool that allows to optimize production costs through ongoing control of energy consumption broken down into machines, production lines or entire plants. By linking these data with the current production, it’s possible to determine and compare energy consumption indicators of a product unit depending on machines used and competences of employee teams. Thanks to this, you can minimize the costs of downtime and line retooling. The system warns about the wear of the machines (increased energy demand) by sending notifications by SMS or e-mail. Thanks to the openness of Asix SCADA platform, on which Asix Energy is based, we obtain hassle-free access to most of the measurement devices and control systems available on the market, with the possibility of easy expansion to full visualization of the entire production process.

The analysis of energy consumption provided by the functions available in Asix Energy is not limited only to physical quantities, such as kWh or m3. Using the extensive possibilities of determining the unit costs of energy expressed in any currency, we can precisely determine the financial burden generated by the consumption of any medium. By specifying energy costs in a currency, we obtain data for further calculations determining the percentage share of each of the utilities in the area of consumption we are interested in. Additionally, we have a complete picture of total costs presented in the form of financial values.

Accounting for energy consumers

One of the requirements of a modern EMS class system is the ability to divide the costs of consumed energy among individual recipients. Depending on the specifics of the enterprise operation using the Asix Energy system, customers can be charged with costs both in the form of physical quantities, the value of energy consumed, and thanks to the additional Contractors module, full financial settlement using any tariffs. In addition to standard energy tariffs imposed by energy suppliers, which are predefined in the Contractors module, it is possible to create any own tariff containing both variable and fixed charges. Tariffs that can be assigned to a contract concluded with an energy supplier or consumer enable simple creation of attachments to billing invoices. The Contractors module can be successfully used both by energy suppliers and, for example, in shopping malls or large production plants with independent recipients who are separate economic entities.

Key Performance Indicators

The Asix Energy system fully shows its capabilities when fed with up-to-date information about the on-going production and production orders. The summary of information coming from 2 different worlds – of production and of energy carriers - provides a lot of interesting information – Key Performance Indicators (KPI) facilitating strategic decisions to optimize production process. The primary ones include:

• Amount of energy consumed by the machine during operation and idle state;

• Amount of energy used by the machine to produce a unit of the product;

• Amount of energy lost when retooling the machine and line;

• Amount of energy used by the machine over an entire single production cycle or order;

• Amount of energy used during a specific shift;

• Amount of energy used by the entire plant during idle state (including the indication of places where the energy is lost);

• Energy consumption indicator during production time versus non-production time.

All these indicators can be compared:

• With historical values, which allows you to follow the process of machine wear and makes it easier to take a decision about the planned renovation.

• Among machines, production lines or even entire plants and properly allocate production orders to minimize costs.

• Among shifts or individual operators to assess their work.

Power Guard Module

An integral element of Asix Energy is the Asix power guard module, allows to monitor current consumption of selected energy media (e.g.: electricity, gas) and generate alarms when forecast trends exceed the contracted capacities, which can trigger severe penalties to be paid to the energy/gas supplier. In another scenario, the Power Guard module can monitor the correctness of the production process, supervising power consumption in relation to the reference value predicted for the production plan.

Visualization

The Asix Energy system includes predefined graphics for users:

• The main panel containing information about the current consumption of individual energy utilities and alarms about current and expected exceedances (power guard); the panel is available via a web browser (an example of the main panel below).

• Graphics for reading data from meters.

• Graphics showing the cost of the energy medium for a given period, calculated on the basis of defined unit costs (Tariffs).

• Graphics presenting active power profiles of electricity.

• Graphics showing implementation of the assumed energy Targets.

• Benchmarks for different time periods.

• Ranking of the most energy-consuming points.

Reports

Asix system offers a convenient tool for designing and generating reports based on the MS SQL Server Reporting Services technology. For the user this means an option of freely designing, modifying, browsing and generating reports in Asix environment.

Asix Energy includes in the package a set of over 25 types of reports, freely configurable by the user and available through a dedicated portal (below is an example of a daily and hourly electricity consumption report).

We emphasize the fact that the application users are not limited to running pre-defined reports, but are also given the ability to create new reports according to their needs. AsRaport module offers a possibility of creating reports providing in-depth analysis of monitored Energy data and to optimize parameters of production processes. The reports can be generated according to time schedule or on demand. The user can define the preferred publication format (PDF, DOC, XLS, HTML, etc). If such a need arises, the report can be authorized by the supervisor level user before official publication to a number of recipients. In the context of information security, it is also important that you can control user permissions to access different types of reports.

Trends

Asix Energy allows effectively use the AsTrend tool available in the Asix SCADA system, which enables graphical analysis of the monitored data. AsTrend Main Features:

• Innovative graph viewing method.

• Wide range of presented data types.

• Plotting graphs for many dependent variables in X-Y arrangement.

• Arbitrary arrangement of graphs from different periods (it is also possible to compare time based curve of the same variable in two different time periods).

• Multiple graph panels.

• Possibility to describe the Y axis with text values of states (eg sterilization, pasteurization, product ejection, emergency ejection, washing).

• Intuitive trends wizard.

• Real-time zoom in/out function for a selected graph section.

• Presentation of all data in a tabular form.

• Exporting the data to PDF, BMP, TXT or an MS Excel spread sheet.

• Importing data from external sources.

• User-friendly ad-hoc generation of table reports for various time periods and selected variable aggregat.

Data analysis in MS Excel spreadsheet

Since MS Excel is a very popular tool in engineering, Asix Energy also allows to use the Asix Excel extension available in Asix SCADA system for the Microsoft Office suite, which allows to create quickly reports from the archive data and allows immediate access to current data – only a few clicks are needed for the data to appear in the Excell data sheet.

Thanks to this extension, it is possible to read the monitored current and archive data directly, including Asix Energy system, directly to the cells of any own spreadsheet. For more advanced users, it is also possible to access data using scripts, based on a Visual Basic object and functions specially prepared for this purpose.


Asix Energy Lite

Many companies are currently looking for a simple tool to determine the consumption of energy media without need for a deeper analysis. These requirements are met by a very cost-competitive solution, which is Asix Energy Lite. This simple EMS system is delivered as a PC-box with complete pre-installed software. Asix Energy Lite is based on Asix SCADA platform, providing ability to communicate with a wide range of measuring devices, and information about the current and stored values of monitored energy media is available via a web browser.

Asix Energy Light can be also solution used in EMS systems, the structure of which is highly distributed or in which the communication links used to transmit information to the central system are not of good quality. Asix Energy Light then acts as a gateway in communication, providing the central system with ability to access the buffered data.


Proven platform

Thanks to the solution in which Asix Energy is based on the proven Asix platform and the Microsoft SQL Server software, the following benefits were provided:

• System openness – it is possible to communicate with most available measuring devices through more than 100 communication protocols. Easy integration with ERP, MES etc. class systems.

• Scalability – the system can be expanded to an unlimited size and additional modules and functionalities can be added to it.

• Accessibility – it is possible to access from both standard computers and mobile devices through Ethernet, Internet and Intranet networks, through the VPN remote access system and mobile networks.

• Reliability – it is possible to create redundant configurations of the system.

• Security – thanks to the virtualisation technology supported, IT services fully control the access to the software, the uploading of updates and the testing of changes.

• User-friendly and flexible interface – the interface and the type of the information displayed is adjusted to the level on which the data are presented (different data for operators, different data for managers). The system can be customised to meet specific requirements of the Customer.

Benefits

To sum up, The Asix Energy software allows the Consumer to:

• Monitor the energy consumed by machines, process lines, departments, entire plant or a group or plants in terms of efficiency, including on-line Energy Performance Indicators (EnPI).

• Create "virtual” energy counters, that is, values calculated according to mathematical formulas, e.g. summing, averaging of physical counter indications or calculating their differences.

• Monitor pre-set targets and notify relevant persons through pre-established communication channels (SMS, e mail) when they are exceeded.

• Create reports both for the technical personnel (charts, tables and histograms) and for the management (managerial dashboards).

• Select the most beneficial tariff (or price plan) – based on the analysis of Energy consumption costs in the Industrial Plant or the entire Capital Group.

• Select the most beneficial contracted power while also analysing the profitability of exceedings.

• Guard the contracted power (electric energy, gas) to avoid unnecessary exceedings and penalties for excessive energy consumption (the Power Guard module). This can be done by notifying operators in advance about a predicted exceedance of the power threshold and leaving it for them to decide what steps should be taken or by automatic performance of pre-defined actions (e.g. disabling specific, less important energy receivers, temporary reduction of device operation parameters, locking of drive activation etc.).

• Analyse the reactive power compensation in the plant, which will also make it possible to avoid high penalties.

• Analyse the split of costs of the consumed energy into departments and proces lines.

• Reorganise industrial processes by shifting loads to cheaper energy zones while avoiding unnecessary consumption.

Asix Energy supports the implementation and maintenance of the energy management system according to ISO 50 001. It enables to achieve objectives and tasks of the policy of efficient energy use and also to measure the policy actual effects. These advantages make Asix Energy an indispensable tool used to optimise production costs in every modern production plant.

 

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Asix Energy - leaflet

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