Bringing together real-time energy and efficiency data.

The solution

We helped our client to collect real-time data from HVAC PLCs, weather reports and 4G energy meters, combining data sets to identify new performance metrics and maintenance insights. As HVAC types vary, the key features of our solution are flexible.

Defining what data to collect is critical
In order to create the solution we started by identifying the data needed to deliver these metrics. In this solution this included:

1.  Energy consumption
2.  Power factor
3.  Current and predicted temperature and humidity
4.  Operating hours and CO₂ as a proxy for occupancy
5.  Filter pressure
6.  Fan speeds
7.  Operating status

Initial goals of the solution
The first goal of the solution was to focus on connecting to the meters, PLCs and external weather service to collect data in a consistent and reliable manner, as well as ensuring data quality and integrity, so we built a solution with the following features:

1.  Monitor critical operational data received from the equipment via a web-based system
2.  Ensure device management monitoring for was set in place
3.  Define business logic for the application to meet the business objectives
4.  Provide alarm and alert notifications via email or SMS messages
5.  Start collecting historical data to enable energy consumption forecasting
6.  Provide the right dashboards to the right users with the right insights
7.  Test the application, making sure all of the above goals are met, based on the below solution architecture

Before go-live, we test four critical aspects of the solution:

Security
The Rayven AI + IoT platform is built with security as a top priority and our proprietary security architecture ensures that data is secure at all points of the environment.

The solution includes data encryption in transit from device-to-cloud, as well as device authentication; security (Bearer) tokens; SSL, AES and RSA encryption; as well as additional device security checks done via automated polling.

Connectivity
Data from HVAC PAC PLCs is sent to LV power meters over MODBUS. The LV meter transmits data from the PAC and meter to the Rayven cloud via a 4G connection. Weather data is accessed via a WebAPI, whilst additional system metadata is added directly through data entry screens.

Data integrity
Your ability to make the right decisions is highly reliant on the integrity of your data. Making sure that you have reliable connections means that your data is always up-to-date and that you can rely on it, giving you the confidence to make critical business decisions in real-time based on it. As part of implementation, we tested and ensured that the raw data matched what was being seen in the dashboards and enabled back-fill capabilities just in case communication ever went down.

Industrial data science
The objective of the exploratory data analysis was to identify trends in the data,  which included:

1.  Energy usage patterns compared with temperature and humidity
2.  Maintenance and failure alerts

What’s next?

We are gathering data that will help us to build models of energy forecasting and HVAC predictive maintenance to deliver further financial and time savings.