Efficiency management

Efficiency management

ECN Automation develops projects for the efficient management of plant resources such as electrical energy, fuel consumption, utilities and productive assets.

• Power Management
• Plant Utilities Management
• Fuel Distribution Management
• Asset Management

Power Management

A Power Management system's main objective is to monitor the most important plant power consumers either areas, machinery or motors to register the information and get historical graphics, cost evaluations, production KPI’s in order to make decisions of cost savings goals.

At ECN Automation we focus on offering solutions that help our clients make the best decisions. The steps for designing such a system are as follows:

• Identify the field elements within the plant that need to be monitored
• Select the electrical variables to monitor
• Architecture design and selection of active elements that collect information
• Centralize information on a server
• Generation of reports according to the needs of our clients
• According to plant requirements, generate remote reports on the WEB platform at EDGE or Cloud level

Architecture

The elements of a traditional system are:

• Current inductor for protection and monitoring
• Electrical network analyzers
• Database and visualization software

With our value solution, we guarantee a modular architecture that adapts to the requirements of the plant, with the necessary elements for gathering information and different communication protocols according to plant standards and electrical regulations.

Different architectures of Power Management System

Architecture for data visualization in the cloud:

It allows you to send data directly to the cloud, registering and integrating it in the main current BigData platforms to be able to carry out an easy management through simple Dashboards, directly from the internet.

System characteristics:

• Compatible with the main IoT platforms for big data analysis
• Distributed system, allowing the centralization of data from multiple facilities in the same system
• Connection from anywhere with internet access
• Does not require installing and maintaining a local server
• Does not require programming specialists

Examples of reports on different platforms

Architecture for local server display

A local system is developed with the Power Management software from any point within the plant where there is a Wi-Fi connection and from the consumption and quality monitoring computers.

System characteristics:

• Incorporates local software for complete facility management
• Access to SGEi from any web browser either in local or remote mode
• May or may not require installing and maintaining a local server
• Generic Modbus or ethernet driver to add any device on the market
• Internal memory in field devices (analyzers) for data analysis and traceability through graphs and tables
• Alarms and invoice simulation for correct maintenance

Examples of screens and reports in local software

Highlights of Power Management System’s ECN Automation Solutions

	Real-time display of device parameters (electrical, process signals, temperatures)
	Remote parameterization of devices
	Historical record
	Graphical and table representation of stored data
	XML data export (OPC and SQL with additional modules)
	Compatible with any web browser, even on tablets and cell phones

Plant Utilities Management

One of the main operating costs are the plant utilities:

• Compressed air
• Natural gas
• Water
• Steam
• Power

At the same time, it is where we will find the greatest waste, mainly because its use is distributed in all plant facilities, which makes it difficult to record and control leaks and excess consumption.

By implementing a measurement, recording and control system, savings of up to 20% in the consumption of these energy sources can be achieved.

ECN Automation has designed an energy consumption information system that allows it to keep an accurate record of the distributed use of these fluids in the plant and associate it with production, obtaining key process indicators (KPIs) to generate significant savings.

Energy information system

The energy information system collects data from the measurement points distributed in the compressed air, natural gas, water, steam and power plants, which are concentrated in a server either in the cloud or on-premise. The information of the measurement devices is collected from the same existing meters in the current control systems or by IoT locally or remotely.

General system architecture

KPI dashboard

The information collected from the measurement devices is associated with plant production through KPI's key process indicators, in BI Business Intelligence format that has the versatility of associating information tables, graphs, trends, mathematical calculations according to the user's needs and presented on a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

Fuel Distribution Management

Fuel represents up to 30% of the fixed expenses of mining operations, this can be reduced thanks to the correct fuel management. Through the correct instrumentation to achieve fuel reconciliation in its plants, monitoring from the supply chain to gasoline dispatch, multi-operation monitoring for decision making, authorizations in an agile way, integration to its applications such as ERP, SAP. Customized reports according to the variables that are required. Information traceability with the correct network infrastructure.

The solution covers the entire supply chain: terminals, distribution, transportation, deliveries, supply, transfers, fuel quality analysis and data analytics. The product has been specifically designed for the environmental conditions and requirements of the mining industry.

Architecture

Asset Management

This Asset Centre-based solution from Rockwell Automation allows you to create a model of your plant including all the assets that need to be monitored, such as instrumentation, PLCs, panels, operating stations. Through dashboards the condition of the equipment is shown in real time to allow timely and informed decision making. In the same way, the information collected is stored to allow the historical analysis of the behavior of the assets.

Benefits

• Improve the usage factor
• Improve productivity
• Employee safety
• Promotes management and quality
• Better version management
• Tracking and reporting with asset data related to the automation of your entire production system

Characteristics

• Allows managing security policies for access to the control system
• Allows you to keep a record of the changes in the programs
• Version control
• Disaster recovery module allows to restore the last “stable” version of the program
• Allows you to manage the configuration and calibration of the instruments

Features