Measuring electricity-use is one of the most useful measures of machine performance and efficiency, but this usually means installing hard-wired sub-meters in multiple areas of the plant to measure machines, either individually or in groups such as a production line. Monitoring individual machines is generally cost-prohibitive using sub-meters.
Since the IOT, utility data — electricity, natural gas, steam, water and air — can be captured easily and inexpensively by tiny, self-powered sensors that are simply clipped-on over a wire's insulation and will transmit the data via wi-fi or cellular service to the cloud.
In the cloud, our system will store the data indefinitely, so you can compare different time periods, and will analyze it so you can understand how you are using and perhaps wasting energy and other resources.
Because they simply clip-on (and off), you can install up to 100 sensors to monitor 100 machines in a single day, which costs about 20-25% of the cost installing sub-meters.
SiteWatch 360 uses a LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) system, which operates on the industrial, scientific, and medical radio band (centered on 915 MHz in North America).
Unlike Wi-Fi, which can be used for transmitting large volumes of data over short distances, LoRaWAN can be used for transmitting small volumes of data — such as power data or other engineering variables — over much longer distances, which is ideal for transmitting customer data to the SiteWatch 360 cloud.
Typical ranges indoors are 300-900ft, depending on walls, floors and other obstructions, and outdoors about 1-3 miles, depending on signal optimization.
SiteWatch 360 typically takes measurements of energy use every 10 seconds and transmits the data once a minute. LoRaWAN is the ideal protocol for transmitting small amounts of data over longer distances. A large commercial building or an average manufacturing facility would probably need only one or two gateways to receive data from sensors and transmit it to the cloud.
In the end, the main value of SiteWatch 360 to most customers is the insight they get when they view the operations of a single machine or multiple machines in real time. This level of granularity and understanding is hard to achieve with other systems — in terms of time invested or cost of the system.
This insight can help save energy, save labor, speed-up all kinds of reports as well as improving maintenance and overall machine-reliability.
