Monitoring voltage, current and frequency for better energy management

25 June 2012

Before being able to improve energy efficiency, it is first necessary to be able to measure and evaluate the amount of power actually being consumed. Any deviations from normal values can be used to identify the condition of the machine and evaluated through the use of monitoring systems.

B&R offers the EnMon energy monitoring package as part of its APROL process control system and its new X20AP energy measurement module is able to measure voltages, currents, frequencies and reactive components on all phases. Current and voltage measurements up to the 31st harmonic can be achieved and a fourth channel makes it suitable for measuring leakage currents on the neutral line.

By preprocessing signals and providing measurements together with calculated effective performance values as sets of digital variables, the new module takes some of the load off the CPU.

Measurement value curves recorded can help provide the basis for optimising traverse paths within a machine, in turn contributing to further energy efficiency.

Three variants of the energy measurement module are available – for connecting 20 mA, 1 A and 5 A transformers.