Energy Management Systems

Description of Energy Management Systems

Electric, gas, or water utilities have to remotely monitor, control, and optimize the generation and the transmission of energy. It has been a typical field of application for SCADA. Sensors are spread along the production line to capture data like temperature and pressure, The remote control of the different knots of the grid is done by connected PLCs which are able to interface with the pump, valves, tanks, heater, cooler or any other device. 

The energy management systems are also a tool to manage the security and the quality of a production plant and the devices often need to work in corrosive or explosive environments.

Specific conditioning of the devices is required in line with legal framework like for example ATEX. We usually refer to refer to very large deployments of sensors or connected PLC for corporate enterprises which carefully test the concepts before massively scaling in the deployment.

An interesting case is the challenge of providing energy to electric vehicles and connect them to the electric grid of each country. 

These solutions can also be a contribution to efficiency in production but also against climate change with a special mention to solar plants which often do not have easy access to landline communication infrastructure.

Electric utilities have deployed system of smart meters in terms of millions of devices to collect and remotely read the consumption of consumers. Another interesting application is the emerging requirement of power supply to electric vehicles and connect them to the electric grid of each country. In this case, this technological move is also an opportunity to promote new kinds of service for consumers.