Information Technology Helps Users Monitor Power Consumption

Buildings and factories are a lot like living creatures. Their mechanical systems, from elevators to manufacturing equipment, are like muscles. Specialized fluids and life-giving utilities such as water, natural gas, steam, and electricity course through their structure. And they respond to their environment. They get hot and cold, and they can feel the effects of humidity.

Increasingly, monitoring the physiology of buildings, factories, and aircraft has relied on networks of sensors that serve as a nervous system, collecting data on conditions and problems and then feeding information to an automated brain center such as a building management system (BMS). Such systems allow human users or rules-based software to monitor conditions and make decisions, whether shutting down a machine that has reached a certain temperature or closing off a gas line that has developed a leak. But a nervous system for a building or another structure needs computing power not just at the brain center; it also needs computing power at the nodes — at the sensors and data-collection points.

Embedded Research Solutions (ERS) of Annapolis, MD, has developed software for these nervous-system endpoints. Not only is ERS supplying “miniature software” (loaded on tiny processing devices that can be attached to sensors), it also sells a service that includes real-time collection of data, aggregation of the data, and delivery of the data back to the customer.

The software for ERS’s technology was funded through Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I and Phase II contracts from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) for a concept known as pervasive computing in which multiple sensors work together on a network.

How it Works

In addition to the obvious savings from conserving energy, having better insight into how energy is being used in a building also allows the manager of the building to participate in government-endorsed energy initiatives.

The interest in managing power consumption has spawned companies such as Con sumerPowerline and Mosto Technologies Com panies, two energy-asset-management firms that work with large users that want to tap in to the energy incentives programs. Mosto is using the ERS technology at sites such as Rockefeller Center in New York City. ERS devices and node software are working to gather data on steam-heat usage at Rockefeller Center buildings.

ERS also is seeing significant business through its relationship with ConsumerPowerline. In early 2008, ERS’s technology already was deployed at seven ConsumerPowerline customer sites, and would be used at 300 more customer sites.

Nodes at a customer site could be set up to pass along data in several ways. A node could transmit the data wirelessly, via cellular or analog modem, or via a hardwired network connection. The last method is useful for environments such as aircraft, another application area where ERS’s technology is taking off. ERS is working with aircraft companies Lockheed Martin, BAE, and Gulfstream to deploy ERS software and hardware for sensors used on military and surveillance aircraft for applications such as monitoring the performance of cooling systems.

Where it Stands

Five years ago, ERS was positioning its technology largely as a tool for the R&D community. The company repackaged its technology from a simple plug-and-play wireless device suited to researchers who wanted to collect data such as river temperature or rainfall levels at various points in the field, to a product optimized for commercial and industrial users.

The improved device, which is called a Monitoring & Control Server (MCS), still acts as the gateway for data from field sensors and actuators. MCS can work on a wired or wireless network, and stored data within the MCS can be retrieved via a network connection (Ethernet or cellular), dial-up, or by simply plugging in a USB memory device. Inside the repackaged device, the core miniature software remains essentially the same.

More Information

For more information on power management software from ERS, visit http://info.hotims.com/22928-518 . (Source: L. Scott Tillett/NTTC; MDA TechUpdate, Missile Defense Agency, National Technology Transfer Center Washington Operations)



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This article first appeared in the October, 2009 issue of Defense Tech Briefs Magazine.

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