TOTRON - information and control of energy production and consumption

  • measuring of heat, electricity, gas, water, and air consumption
  • collection and data transmitting into energy nets
  • supervisory centre and energy balance points
  • meter checking
  • interpretation of parameters supply
  • data transmitting into accounting and the other systems

Information system TOTRON is designed for automatic data collection from heat, electricity, gas, water, and air meters in selected points of power energy nets and for the subsequent processing and interpretation of the data acquired. Data collection and transmitting to supervisory centre are mostly provided by TRONIC 2000 communication converters, which are an integral part of HW system. The SW part of the TOTRON information system is, more interesting for the final user. All transmitting data from the meters are sent and shared to technical/economical personnel staff in a convenient form to their own work. Mutual intercommunication to the process technology control systems, pipe line network & distribution systems and heat exchanger technologies creates a complex control system which allows to minimize the energy production costs (for the supplier), or consumption costs (for the consumer), and, at the same time, to check the required supply quality.

Of course, the SW TOTRON IS (information system) prepares data to be available to the other information systems (summaries, invoicing etc) and continually check all meters function. The monitoring of energy consumption can be calculated and divided to each centre and work shift to increase labor productivity and reduce costs.

 

Communication network

Is necessary to build communication network and so transmit the data, from various data points on site, to supervisory control centre. TRONIC CONTROL company has a long experience how to build communication net both metallic (cable, fibre optic cable, phone/GSM) and wireless (radio modem, microwave link). Very often, at the building - up of communication network, are used all possibility and than arise large and combination net. The process site is webbed with communication cables, which are ended in one exchange point (often heat exchange station, the building ground floor, etc.). The communication is then connected between this point and the supervisory control station by radio, a microwave link or a phone.

 

Data concentration and transmission

Particular sources of data i. e. control systems and meters are necessary to connect to communications net (bus). The kind of connection depends on the type of communication net. For concentrating and temporary data saving from meters and to avoid following communication to supervisory centre, SW TOTRON IS operates with several types of smart transducer to execute following functions:

  • Data measuring and scanning, communication to the meters.
  • Temporary data storage before their transmitting to supervisory centre (available up to five days, from Thursday evening to Monday afternoon in case of logoff or breakdown the communication).
  • Data sampling with a sufficient frequency of measuring parameters. It is supposed to scan and archive the parameters by energy type (temperature, pressure, flow, power output, energy, volume, breakdown error). The data are saved with sampling period five or ten minutes to reach enough accuracy information on the supply quality.
  • Communication to the supervisory control centre (cable, phone/GSM, radio etc.)

 

Data processing in SW TOTRON IS

Transmitting meters data are received in control centre by SW communication module. This data are verified and saved in SQL database mostly located in database server. Consequently are used and processed in central control (balance) stations.

SW TOTRON IS allows an overview of separate exchange points, supply parameters for individual final customer and of each meter. The graphic SW creates a window that allows looking into the system, making configuration changes, receiving balance and other summaries, creating exports, etc.

Description of data concentration and transmission

Depending on the fact, if is used in specific location one or more meters, than can be chosen, for data concentration and transmission, suitable communication transducer, either TRONIC 2000 station or KOMG communication converter. Each of these possibilities represents as a meter communication interface as well as communication concentrator for data transmission to superior centre.

Communication interface module either in meter, TRONIC 2000 or KOMG provides the communication to the others through cable connection. The number of communication modules added to the basic module has to correspond to the number of different types of meter connected in the specific location. This is caused by the fact, that meters of different types may use the same electric interface (e.g., RS-485, MBUS, SIOX, etc.) but different protocols. The communication module cyclically transmits the data from separate meters. In exception operator “hot inquire,“ requests about the priority data download from the specific meter, the cycle is interrupted, data transmit performed and than the cyclical transmission is resumed.

The data concentrator/TRONIC 2000/KOMG transducer is equipped with 44kB to 256kB RAM memory according to the type. This is a memory space to save a data before their transmission to supervisory center. We know, from our experience that is enough space to keep all the data in memory for five days. It means e.g. interruption in communication, which happens on Thursday afternoon and is not repaired until Monday. The data received from the meters are checked for credibility, error rate at communication and error sequence are recorded. This protocol is created continually. If there are more meters connected (e.g. 70 pcs) it is not possible to create archives with a period of 5 minutes. In this case, both type of GTW (gateways), have the function “compressed monitoring“. By operator - command starts to record data from all meters with a period of five minutes. For 70-ty meters can be overfilled, such an archive, within two hours. Then the data will be lost. Operator can spool command out, as a single application, all data from the archive and it is ready for the other usage.

The communication module to a supervisory center – TRONIC 2000 or KOMG – can be used for cable communication, a dial-up or GSM network using a modem, a radio modem or a microwave link. The communicator represents the gate in the direction to the supervisory centre of electric industry.