This system, called Nexo, not only represents a great improvement to learn about the current energy consumption in the facilities of the institute, but also enables its analysis and the consequent decision making.
The efficient use of a scarce and expensive resource such as energy is essential, especially in isolated territories such as islands, where dependence on fossil fuels for energy supply is currently a fundamental part of its production. Thus, the use of solar panels or wind turbines contributes more and more to the generation of electricity on the islands. However, the optimisation of available resources, with the aim of minimising energy consumption, is also vital to achieve greater energy efficiency.
The Institute of Technology and Renewable Energies (ITER), as a public sector company dependent on the Cabildo Insular de Tenerife and in its eagerness to contribute to the energy sustainability of the island of Tenerife, has implemented a real-time consumption monitoring system of its resources and infrastructures to optimise its energy efficiency.
Specifically, the ITER Robotics Unit has worked, within the framework of the Nexo project, on the integration of the energy measurement equipment distributed throughout ITER´s facilities in the data platform, accounting for a total of 58 different devices in which more than one million variable values are recorded daily: Energy consumed, instantaneous active and reactive powers, voltages or currents by phases, etc …
A fundamental aspect, and that causes an impact on the energy consumption of any company or household in the Canary Islands, is the climate. The adverse weather conditions that occur during heat waves, increasingly frequent, condition the use of devices with high peak power consumption, which means an increase in energy consumption and, consequently, in the economic cost associated with it. The integration of real-time consumption data into the Nexo system, where variables from more than 70 weather stations are already available in real time, allows for a more accurate and quality analysis.
The data recorded in Nexo represent a great advance to know the state of energy consumption in the company’s facilities; however, they are just that, numerical data of energy or meteorological variables. The added value is obtained through the development of advanced visualisation tools that allow the user, to quickly analyse the situation and make decisions based on it.
These panels show real time energy consumption of a resource and its associated variables, but at the same time it’s possible to make retrospective analysis of any variable registered allowing to later determining the causes of unexpected consumption detected increases.
In addition, to control these consumptions more efficiently and avoid the continuous need for consultation by ITER´s staff, an event and alarm notification system has been programmed that continuously checks the recorded energy values, generating alarms that respond to anomalous or unexpected records, such as, for example, a high consumption in an office workspace outside working hours or insufficient consumption of a resource that must be operating continuously as a ventilation equipment or cooling pump.
More information on the Nexo project is available at https://www.iter.es/portfolio-items/nexo.
