The Power of Virtual Energy Manager

saveenergyonline's Virtual Energy Manager is extremely powerful. The basic concept is to provide an energy manager that is always there 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The following examples show just how powerful Virtual Energy Manager can be.

Is your heating working properly?

The following graphs show one of our customer's buildings. The graphs shows two different areas on site both of which tell a story.

The graph below shows a zone that is struggling to maintain the required temperature. We can see the room temperature (Y1 - the red trace) fluctuates throughout the day. The occupied period is shown by the vertical yellow bands. The room temperature sometimes achieves setpoint (18°C) but often it is lower than this, dropping to as low as 14°C as some points, and lower at night. The controller's demand (Y2 - the blue trace), which is a function of the heater's output can be seen at 100% for large parts of the day. What does this tell us? It suggests a number of possible causes. It may be that the heaters in this area are under sized. It could be that the function of the building has changed, may be the roller shutter doors are open more frequently than when the heating was originally designed. It could even suggest that one or more heaters are faulty. In these circumstance Virtual Energy Manager would automatically spot the problem and alert us to investigate the cause.

The bottom graph on the other hand shows a zone in the same building controlling well. The room temperature (Y1) can be seen rising at the start of the day and levelling off at the required temperature of 17°C. You can also clearly see the system is shut down over the weekend. The controller's demand (Y2) fluctuates to maintain the required temperature. It's this efficient control of the heaters that delivers the high energy savings possible.

Protecting your building automatically

One of the inherent features of our SeaChange controllers are safety features like fabric protection. The Virtual Energy Manager graphs below clearly shows the system automatically switching on the heating to maintain a minimum temperature in the room.

The room temperature (Y1) can be seen decaying as the occupation end on Friday evening but as the temperature falls to 10°C the heating can be seen coming on over the weekend. This ensure the temperature stays above the unoccupied temperature setpoint. This temperature may be set to protect the building fabric, prevent pipes from bursting or even to protect stock stored within a space. You can also see that the heater's output, measured by the controller's demand (Y2) never exceeds 20% thus keeping energy use to a minimum even in these exceptional circumstances.

Helping to spot the less obvious

The power of Virtual Energy Manager can be clearly seen in this next example. This particular customer has an area of their factory that works at weekend even though the majority of the site is unoccupied. Analysis of the Virtual Energy Manager data quickly highlighted a problem, a problem that once found and fixed save our client even more money.

The bottom graphs shows the area in the factory that operates both Saturday and Sunday. The vertical yellow bars show the occupation periods. You can clearly see the rise in room temperature (Y1) as the heaters come on early Sunday morning. The top graph shows the room temperature in the adjacent area of the factory. Again plot (Y1) shows a rise in room temperature that exactly corresponds to the heating coming on next door. When the client investigated they found that the doors between the two areas were regularly left open at weekends. A change in management procedures solved the problem and all because Virtual Energy Manager could automatically spot the anomaly.