Remotely Monitoring Energy Consumption

CLEVELAND - Feb. 11, 2021 - PRLog -- ataTaker DT82I Simplifies Industrial Energy Audit

To find the best way to reduce energy costs, an industrial company contacted CAS DataLoggers for an electric energy monitoring system. Two separate buildings, a manufacturing plant, and an office building, situated approximately 500 ft. apart needed to start monitoring energy consumption. The electric bill did not have enough detail for the customer to fully understand their energy use or to decide useful corrective actions. Rather, they needed to monitor specific circuits and their usage over time.

Energy Data Collection

Industrial energy audits can be more useful if conducted over a long enough period of time to average out temporary fluctuations, so the customer decided to use an energy consumption monitoring period of one month.

For this purpose, CAS provided a dataTaker DT82I industrial data logger. It offers up to 10 million points of internal data storage, which is plenty of space for this one-month data logging period. Using the dEX software provided with the data logger, a program was easily created to record the critical data every 15 minutes.

Voltage and Current Measurement

To measure the current and voltage on the manufacturing plant's 3-phase motors, CAS supplied Wattnode WND-WR-MB wide range energy meters together with 200 amp split-core current transformers. The same setup is being used for the HVAC system except that 100 amp current transformers were substituted because of the lower current draw of this system.

The WND is connected to the data logger via the RS-485 serial interface of the DT82I and it utilizes the Modbus RTU communication protocol to allow precise measurements including voltage, current, power, energy, and power factor.

Office Temperature and Humidity Measurement

To properly evaluate the HVAC system efficiency, it was also necessary to precisely measure the temperature and humidity variations in different locations of the buildings during the day. To eliminate the need to run cables to these various locations, Novus RHT-Air Wireless Temperature and Humidity Transmitters were positioned at the key locations throughout the office space.

Energy Audit Benefits

The dataTaker DT82I's are well-suited to this application, being compact, quick to deploy, and cost-effective for monitoring the energy consumption of all the values required.
At the end of the energy audit period, the company had relevant information about its energy consumption.  Consequently, this is projected to result in a significant reduction of their total energy costs.

For more information on dataTaker data loggers, energy audit monitoring solutions, or to find the ideal solution for your application-specific needs, contact a CAS DataLogger Application Specialist at (800) 956-4437 or visit us at https://www.dataloggerinc.com.