Application example 008 - Energy monitoring

Summary description:
The Canadian Government is running research projects on building energy efficiency. Some of these projects are on buildings in the northern regions of the Canadian territory where conditions are very harsh during the winter months. In this case, a hockey arena was selected in the Kangiqsujuaq Northern Village. This village is located in the northernmost tip of the province of Quebec, north of the treeline. The precise need was to monitor all operational parameters of the arena, to get a detailed energy consumption profile of the building, so that future designs can be improved.

Specific challenges:
To get an accurate energy profile, all parameters affecting the energy consumption of the building must be monitored in real-time, and archived for later analysis. For example, outside air temperature and humidity, inside air conditions, compressor power consumption, coolant temperatures, lighting demand, heating demand and such must be monitored. The main challenge lied in the remote, practically non-servicable region where the system is installed.

The solution Centris Technologies implemented in the arena used ISaGRAF, installed on an ICPDAS 8837 data acquisition chassis. This chassis reads signals from the various instruments, located all over the arena. Then, from the research lab, a PCVue SCADA station scans in real-time the controller installed in the arena. Communications are transmitted through a satellite uplink to a base communication station in the village, then through a secondary wireless link from the base station to the arena.

Specifications:
-Acquisition at 10 min intervals with two wireless links in the communication chain;
-Response time less than 1 sec;
-About 50 I/O hooked up to 8837 chassis and remote 7018 I/O modules;
-1 PCVue SCADA station in Montreal performing the real-time data acquisition;
-OPC connectivity between the controller and SCADA system.