School uses Ravica sensorprobes to measure green energy
Filed under: environmental monitoring, power monitoring, SensorProbes
We just received a call from a community college in the Mid West. They wanted to purchase four AC Voltage Detectors to integrate into their solar and wind power project. Since I am big on alternative energy and the application of technology to measure it, I jumped on this call right away.
The energy project is a collaboration between the Engineering and Information Technology programs of the college and funded by a local community grant. The goal of the project was to help middle school students build two unique energy sources using the power, and in the end, collect data for reporting. Each energy segment needs to be monitored separately. The first segment was going to be wind and the second would be solar.
The solar side would consist of two collectors and one battery storage unit. Each one of these collectors would have a sensorprobe (the storage unit would have a sensor probe and a digital voltmeter). This would allow the team to record how much energy the cells produced, at any given time. We would also be able to tell the combined energy sent to the storage unit and, at the same time, tell how much energy is in the storage unit.
The wind side would have a similar setup. Each turbine would have a sensor. This would tell us how much energy the turbine was producing. Adding the digital voltmeter to the main feed of the storage unit would tell us combined energy production. The AC Voltage Detector would tell us the state of the wind turbines at any time. What makes the wind side of the project different is that the turbine can produce energy any time.
In both of these cases, the students would have to construct the power units from general industry parts. They couldn’t buy an off the self solution. One of the reasons they decided to go with the Ravica line of sensorprobes for data collection was due to the fact that the probes were totally independent of the energy production system. Setting alarms gives you the added feature of being able to monitor the entire system. This is what they needed to meet the needs of the project, not to mention it helped them come in under budget.
On the data side of things, the team would compile the data from each sensor and reference hourly data from gathered the NOAA weather data. They would then take all of this data and feed it to a community web portal. In the end, they would be able to see how much energy each unit was able to produce at any time. They would all be able to see how weather played in each of the individual units production, and if the entire system compensates for any loss per unit.
I am going to keep this project on my radar. It’s exciting to see these kids having fun and exploring alternitive forms of energy.
- JimmyD
Custom sensor integration support adds flexibility to Ravica SensorProbes
Filed under: Data Center, environmental monitoring, Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes
Do you have a need for a sensor that is not on the Ravica list of intelligent environmental monitoring sensors? No problem! All Ravica SensorProbe models have the ability to integrate with custom sensors via our Digital Voltmeter sensor or 4-20mA sensor.
For custom integration with third party sensors, the description text can be changed to whatever you would like. This will be reflected on the summary and sensor tabs, as well as email alerts. For example, if you were integrating a custom gas sensor, you could change the label to “Chamber 5 Gas Vent” and that label would be displayed everywhere for that sensor, including data storage and graphs.
How exactly is this accomplished? Connect a compatible sensor and and configure the sensor port appropriately. On the Digital Voltmeter and 4-20mA sensor configuration pages, you can choose to display readings as either an absolute value, such as 0-100 VAC, or as a percentage (i.e. 0-100%). The external sensor used should have an output as a linearized Digital Voltmeter or 4-20mA signal in order to work with either of these sensors.
4-20mA signals are very popular in industrial sensors, because they are particularly resistant to interference from electromagnetic noise. The accuracy of our 4-20mA converters is 0.15%, and the resolution of our 4-20mA converters is 0.1mA. You can use these figures in conjunction with your sensor’s accuracy to find the overall precision of your readings. You can also calibrate the 4-20mA converter. It is worth noting that some sensors and transducers may require an extra power supply, and in some cases may need other electrical components.
It is recommended that you find the external sensor that will best meet your needs and then we can make sure it will correctly work with your SensorProbe. For example, we have customers using the Digital Voltmeter sensor to integrate pressure sensors and water salinity sensors. So whether you need to measure energy from solar panels or even radiation, the Ravica line of SensorProbes offers the flexibility to add custom sensors for almost any application.
Let us know if you have a custom sensor your would like to integrate with your Ravica equipment.
~ Jon Mills
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