What are the ways that intelligent solutions are helping facility teams optimize power and energy performance, whilst meeting business and sustainability goals?
In this NEW series, we start Part 1 with an overview of what a power management system is, and how it helps optimize uptime and efficiency...
Why do you need to manage your power?
The answer is simple. It is because electrical systems are getting more complex. There are more loads and processes that are more power sensitive. There are more types of loads and more types of distributed power sources. Many types of facilities are also getting larger or increasing in power density and criticality. All this means the need for comprehensive monitoring to stay on top of real-time electrical conditions throughout your power distribution system.
What Exactly is a Power Management System?
Power management systems help ensure the safe, reliable, efficient, and compliant operation of your electrical distribution systems, including the assets connected to it. They can help you:
- Avoid electrical fires and prevent shock
- Recover from outages more quickly and safely
- Improve uptime by avoiding unplanned outages
- Find ways to reduce energy costs
- Optimize maintenance and get more life from electrical assets
- Simplify the process of acquiring and maintaining compliance to standards, regulations, and legislation for things such as energy management, carbon emissions, and power quality
Who uses power management systems?
Any facility that depends on their electrical distribution infrastructure to deliver high quality power at all times to keep their operations running. And, in fact, any business that wants to remain competitive and operationally efficient. This can range from large and critical facilities (e.g., hospitals, data centers, airports, telecom, etc.) to industrial plants and commercial buildings or campuses.
What Does a Power Management System Look Like?
A power management system is founded on a digitized power distribution network, including connected devices and sensors that collect data from key points across your electrical infrastructure, from your facility’s service entrance, across all feeders, down to final distribution and loads.
Real-time power information can be acquired from stand-alone power metering devices or from devices that have embedded metering capabilities such as protection relays, breaker trip units, motor control units and variable speed drives. You may already have a large number of these smart devices in place, ready to be connected and used as part of a more complete, fully digitized solution.
All of your important electrical assets can be monitored, including transformers, medium voltage (MV) and low voltage (LV) switchgear, generators, transfer switches, power control panels, distribution panels, motor control centers, uninterruptable power supplies, and harmonic filters. A wide range of data can be continuously gathered 24/7, supporting monitoring and analysis of real-time power conditions, power quality, how efficiently energy is being consumed, and the health of equipment.
Operational information about the power system is provided with situational awareness in mind through a variety of easy-to-use web applications including electrical mimic diagrams, power events analysis, power quality and electrical equipment trends, reports and dashboards. The user interfaces of a Power Management system are highly specialized and engineered for specific Power Management functions. Even though electrical power data can be easily shared with other systems such as building management, SCADA, industrial automation or enterprise energy management systems these other systems are not designed to support facility management teams for the purpose of Power Management. They are simply not designed to provide the operational intelligence required for the real-time operation and maintenance of electrical assets and the power distribution network as a whole.
Resources:
We are the largest Schneider Electric distributor in South Africa. CHAT to us for the best technical advice and product knowledge. SUBSCRIBE to receive these informative weekly articles straight to your inbox.
Source:
