Patent Application
20170122773
The present invention relates to resource consumption monitoring systems. In particular, the present invention relates to a monitoring system, platform, and method for monitoring resource consumption.
In conventional energy distribution networks, the energy consumption of a site is typically measured at a central supply point, e.g. an electricity meter installed between a supply line of an utility provider and a first distribution panel of a given site, for example a single building or a distinct part of a building such as an apartment or the like. In this way, all electrical energy consumed at that particular site can be measured, irrespective of the electrical distribution system of the given site.
The energy consumption measured at such a central supply point is usually used by the utility provider for billing purposes. Thus, at the end of a billing period such as a month or year, the utility provider usually prepares a utility bill based on the measured total consumption and provides it to the site manager or owner. Based on the provided utility bill, a site manager or owner can then determine whether he or she has stayed within a desirable energy budget or has exceeded it.
Such a conventional approach is sufficient for billing purposes. However, in times of high energy prices and a focus on energy efficiency, the data available in such a conventional scheme is insufficient in order to maintain a control over how the energy is actually consumed within a given site and also in order to estimate, at any given time, whether given energy targets will be met.
In addition to metering devices installed at a central supply point, individual metering devices are known. For example, an individual metering device may be plugged into a socket and supply energy to an individual electricity consumer, such as an electrical appliance. Such energy metering devices allow to measure the energy consumption of a particular appliance at a given location. However, such data is only available locally at the individual metering device. Thus, at least in sites comprising a relatively large number of electrical appliances and other electricity consumers, the use of such metering devices is both expensive and time consuming, if a building manager or owner wants to obtain a reasonably complete picture of the energy consumption of the site to be monitored.
Accordingly, there is a need for better systems and methods for monitoring the energy consumption at a particular site.
Preferably, such improved systems and methods should allow a manager or owner of a site to keep an up-to-date overview of the energy consumption.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, a monitoring system for monitoring resource consumption of at least one monitored site is disclosed. The monitored site comprises at least one building. The monitoring system comprises a plurality of sensors deployed at different locations of the at least one monitored site, the sensors being configured to provide measurement values over a data network. The system further comprises a data association facility connected to the data network, the data association facility being configured to associate each measurement value with location information within the at least one monitored site based on a hierarchical model of the monitored site and type information associated with the corresponding sensor of the plurality of sensors. Moreover, the system comprises a graphical interface facility connected to the data network, the graphical interface facility being configured to selectively display the plurality of measurement values based on the associated location information and type information.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, a cloud-based monitoring platform is disclosed. The cloud-based monitoring platform comprises a data capturing module configured to capture granular level, location-specific consumption values provided over at least one data network. The platform further comprises a data association module configured to associate the captured consumption values with location information based on a hierarchical model of at least one monitored site, type information associated with the corresponding source of the captured consumption value and timestamp information based on the time or period, at which the corresponding measurement was obtained. The platform further comprises a data storage module configured to store at least one of the captured consumption values, the hierarchical model of the monitored site, the location information, the type information and the timestamp information associated to the captured consumption values by the data association module. The monitoring platform also comprises graphical interface module configured to selectively display the stored consumption values based on the associated location information and type information.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, a monitoring method is disclosed. The monitoring method comprises obtaining a plurality of granular level, location-specific measurement values from a plurality of sensors deployed at different locations of at least one monitored site. The method further includes associating each measurement value with location information within the at least one monitored site based on a hierarchical model of the monitored site and type information associated with a corresponding sensor of the plurality of sensors, and selectively displaying an interactive representation of the plurality of measurement values based on the associated location information and type information.
The various embodiments of the invention described above enable the implementation of an energy consumption monitoring system, which allows a user to monitor measurement values associated with various parts of a site or various types of sensors using a graphical interface facility. In this way, a plurality of measurement values can be monitored in an easy and intuitive way based on comprehensible information, i.e. location information and type information.
Various embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the attached drawings. In the drawings, like reference symbols are used for like elements of different embodiments.
In various embodiments, the present invention relates to a monitoring system for monitoring resource consumption of at least one monitored site that can selectively display a plurality of measurement values of a site to be monitored. Embodiments of the present invention further relates to a cloud-based monitoring platform and an operating method, which can be used to implement such a monitoring system.
The measuring system 150 is deployed at a site to be monitored, for example a single building or a group of buildings. In case multiple buildings are to be monitored, each building may have its own measuring system 150. In the depicted example, the site is supplied with electrical energy by a utility provider 190a at a central electricity supply point 192a. For example, the site may be connected to an energy distribution network of the utility provider 190a by a smart meter device 154a. Moreover, the site is supplied with gas by a second utility provider 190b at a central gas supply point 192b, metered by a gas metering device 154b. However, in an alternative embodiment, energy may be provided by fewer or more providers, through fewer or more supply points and/or by fewer or more energy carriers to the monitored site.
Within the monitored site, the electrical energy supplied by the utility provider 190a is distributed by a number of distribution panels (not shown). Typically, the electrical energy provided to any specific end point within the site to be monitored is provided via at least one distribution panel and protected by at least one circuit-breaker. In the example embodiment shown in
In the described embodiment, each of the circuit-breakers 160a to 160c has a corresponding sensor 170a to 170c assigned to it. The sensors 170 are placed on the circuit-breakers 160 in order to monitor the energy consumption of corresponding circuits 162a to 162c leading to electrical consumers 164a to 164c, respectively. In a different embodiment, the sensors 170 may be associated with individual appliances, groups of circuit-breakers, distribution panels or any other distinct part of the energy distribution network within the site to be monitored. Such sensors and the data they collect are respectively referred to as granular level sensors and granular level energy consumption values in the following.
The measuring system 150 further comprises a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system 166, which is supplied with energy in the form of gas by the gas metering device 154b. Typically, the HVAC system 166 will comprise one or more internal sensors or control devices, which provide information about the energy used by the HVAC system 166 as well as its distribution throughout the monitored site such as a building.
Moreover, the measuring system 150 comprises an additional sensor 172 for obtaining further status information about the monitored site. In the described embodiment, the sensor 172 is a temperature sensor which measures the temperature at one or several location of the monitored site. Data obtained by the sensor 172 may be used to regulate the HVAC system 166 as well as monitoring the current state of the building.
In other embodiments, the measuring system 150 may comprise further sensors, such as sensors for detecting an opened or closed state of windows, doors, or the like.
The HVAC system 166, the sensors 170 and 172 and optionally the metering devices 154a and 154b are connected by a local area network 156. In this way, location-specific energy consumption values for the individual energy consumers 164 and 166 collected at granular level as well as further measurement values such as temperature and door sensor data can be gathered and provided via the gateway 152, the data network 180 and the gateway 112 to the monitoring platform 110.
Attention is drawn to the fact that the present invention is not restricted to the specific measuring system 150 disclosed in
The monitoring platform 110 comprises a user interface module 120, a data association module 130 and a data storage facility 140. Moreover, the monitoring platform 110 comprises an aggregation module 122 as well as a user interface 124 and a storage interface 142. These modules may be implemented in hardware or software or a combination thereof. For example, the individual modules may take the form of computer code stored on a non-transitory storage device for execution by a general purpose processing device, such as a processor of a web-server computer.
In operation, the data association module 130 associates measurement values received from the various sensors of the measurement system 150 with location information, type information and timestamp information. For example, the data association module 130 may associate each measurement value with a location corresponding to a part of the monitored site, where the measurement was taken based on a hierarchical building model 132 stored in the data storage facility 140. Furthermore, based on sensor type information 134 also stored in the data storage facility 140, the data association module 130 may record a type of data or a type of an electrical equipment that is associated with the respective sensor.
In addition, the data association module 130 may provide each measurement value with a timestamp comprising a date and time at which the respective measurement was obtained. For example, the date and time at which the measurement value was received over the gateway 112 could be recorded. Alternatively, the timestamp information could already be provided by the respective sensor of the measurement system 150. Rather than a specific point in time, the timestamp information may also relate to a period of time over which the measurement was taken. For example, for a smart meter that measures the average energy consumption over a given period, such as a minute, an hour or a day, corresponding timestamp information of such a period may be recorded.
In the described embodiment, each measurement value is stored in the data storage facility 140 together with the associated location information, type information and timestamp information. In other embodiments, the received measurement values may be stored unaltered. In such a system, the data is queried in combination with further information from the hierarchical location model 132 and data type information 134 stored separately in the storage facility 140 on access.
The user interface module 120 according to the described embodiment generates a variety of different output screens to be displayed over a web interface 124. For example, a user of the monitoring platform 110 may connect to the user interface 124 by means of a web browser over an intranet or the Internet. In the described embodiment, the monitoring platform 110 comprises a user management subsystem (not shown) which restricts the access to the user interface 124 to a set of authorized users. After logging into the monitoring platform 110, the user may select different views of the measurement data and other information stored in the storage facility 140 as explained in more detail below with respect to
In addition to viewing live measurement data of individual sensors 170 and 172, the user interface module 120 may also access the data aggregation module 122 or aggregated data generated by the data aggregation module 122 and stored in the storage facility 140. For example, the data aggregation module 122 may compute aggregated energy consumption values based on a plurality of individual measurement values and the hierarchical location model 132 from information stored in the data storage facility 140. Such data may then be provided to the user interface module 120 for display and further analysis.
The way the data is aggregated, as well as information about the hierarchical location model 132 and the data type information 134 may also be provided by means of the user interface 124. Moreover, information stored in the storage facility 140 may be provided over the storage interface 142 to third party platforms or tools for further analysis.
Lastly, the monitoring platform 110 may comprise an alerting facility allowing the generation of automated alerts based on the monitored measurement values or aggregated measurement values. Further details regarding the alerting facility are disclosed in co-pending patent applications having application Ser. No. ______, Attorney Docket: EBL-010 and application Ser. No. ______, Attorney Docket: EBL-012, which are included by reference herewith.
For example, first type of object 210 represents individual measurement values (Datasample) provided by the sensors 170 and 172 as well as intelligent appliances such as the HVAC system 166. Each Datasample object 210 can be assessed by different attributes, including a sensor identifier, a sensor type and a recording time of the measurement value. Furthermore, each Datasample object 210 comprises reading data corresponding to the measurement value taken.
This information can be transformed into PointReading objects 220 associated with a particular location. In other words, the Datasample object 210 represents raw data and the PointReading object 220 represents the processed data.
In addition to the previous values, a Point Reading object 220 comprises a descriptive label and type information and is associated with a particular part of the monitored site. Information regarding the type of data is stored in the respective type attribute. For example, the type of data may be “True” or “Aggregate”.
In the embodiment, the parts of the monitored site itself are reflected by corresponding objects stored in the ODBMS, here Building objects 230, Floor objects 240 or Area objects 250, which together form a hierarchical location model as detailed later with respect to
Information regarding the type of each measurement is stored in respective type attributes. For example, the type of a measurement value of a Datasample object 210 may be qualified by the type of equipment from which the measurement value originates or the data type corresponding to the data to be observed. For example, a sensor 170 measuring the consumption of electrical energy supplied to a socket may have associated type information specifying the type of the equipment as a socket, i.e. a generic electrical appliance, as well as a unit of the readings, i.e. that it relates to electricity measured in the unit of kilowatt (kW).
In the data model 200 shown in
Attention is drawn to the fact that the hierarchy 300 shown in
To aid live monitoring and analysis, graphical representations of individual parts of the monitored site, e.g. individual floors or rooms, may be colored based on corresponding consumption values to form a kind of a heat map. For example, a floor having a particular high energy consumption may be colored red, while other floors with a lower energy consumption may be colored green. Similar coloring schemes may be employed to highlight other undesirable states, such as doors and windows permanently left open, or rooms heated to a very high temperature.
In a main window 540, different types of resources or sensors to be monitored may be selected using buttons 542a to 542e. In the depicted example, the electricity consumption of a selected building is monitored. Using a mode toggle switch 544, the displayed data may be represented based on the hierarchical building model or a device type. In the following explanation, the data is broken down according to the hierarchical location information based, for example, on the hierarchy 300 shown in
In a sidebar window 550, the development of the monitored data of a selected time period is displayed. For example, the overall energy consumption of the site over the last 24 hour period is shown as graph 552 based on selection criteria 554 and summarized in a summary area 556.
The sunburst chart 546 of the interface screen 500 allows a user to drill down into the consumption of a selected resource by clicking on the respective area of the sunburst chart 546. This process is explained in more detail with respect to
Firstly,
In contrast to conventional solutions, where only a total energy consumption of a building or site is measured and then broken down based on statistical models to individual parts of the building, the mechanism behind the monitoring platform 110 uses a different approach. In particular, as explained above, granular level consumption values of individual sensors correspond to the outermost ring 650 data segments. Based on this granular level consumption data, higher levels of the hierarchy, such as a room, floor and building level, are computed by adding up the data of respective lower level values. In this way, a more precise allocation of energy consumption to individual parts of a building can be established.
A similar analysis may be performed starting with the device type by clicking on the mode toggle switch 544 as shown in
As shown in
The background color of the diagram is shaded according to the freshness of the data. In particular, the shaded area 750 represents past data. Once new data becomes available for a given time period, this is indicated by a brighter background color. If the user moves the mouse pointer to one of the graph lines 760 corresponding to a measuring attribute such as energy data, the circadian chart 700 itself would only show the energy data, hiding all other measuring attributes.
As described before, the individual areas of the charts according to
According to the present invention, the user can obtain a live picture of consumption data for different levels of granularity using data aggregation. For example, the monitoring platform 110 can calculate the total floor consumption by summing up all the energy consumption values collected at the equipment level of each room of a site to be monitored.
As a use case, the energy monitoring system 100 allows a user to compare an estimated energy saving associated with a building upgrade, for example changing an existing lighting system to a more energy efficient lighting system, with the actual energy consumption of the building after the change. In this way, the efficiency of different measures improving overall energy efficiency may be assessed objectively in order to maximize a return on investment with respect to climate change mitigation technology.
Based on the used, flexible location model, such an assessment task can be performed at various levels of granularity. For example, a site administrator may compare the energy consumption of one floor already upgraded with a new lighting system with another floor, whose lighting system has not been upgraded yet. Moreover, a building owner may compare different buildings of his or her property portfolio in order to compare the efficiency of individual building managers and users.
