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When a control system is installed, generally, certain points will be allocated
to metering of the building services, such as water, gas and electricity. The controls system will pull values in from
the meters and depending on the specification, the values will be manipulated to either give a pulse count total or summation
of the energy used. The data may then be presented in a format acceptable to a 3rd party interface or as raw data to be evaluated
by an application package, Microsoft Excel to name one. Some controls systems may incorporate their own energy management
package to which these values can be loaded.
Metering is
going to become increasingly necessary to prove energy usage. Showing year on year savings with good reporting functionality
will be required. N PLUS 1 are associated with an extremely good energy metering application and are able to provide
onsite demonstrations.
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The amount
of information that can be gained from a building depends on how many meters are installed. If you only have the meters installed
for the main services at source, then you will only have available the overall total consumption and not individual
readings. However if meters are fitted and distributed to as many different items as possible, then the resultant data can
have a lot more value when looking for energy savings. Items like lighting, chilled water, hot water, space temperatures etc
can all be evaluated a lot better. With metering taking place in as many areas as possible then base load profiling can be
achieved. Monitoring a known profile will soon highlight any problems occurring by high readings outside of operating times
for instance. With maximum monitoring points in place, problems can easily be tracked back to a likely area, i.e.
like plant running outside of time schedules, maybe lighting being left on or plant running out of normal control and as sometimes
happens, plant left running in hand mode.
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