The decrease in natural resources and the increase in energy wastage is drawing the attention of several nations worldwide. Smart solutions have gained higher demand in the last few years due to their extended efficiency in making the industries flourish. IoT in the energy market is expected to reach USD 39.09 billion by 2025, with a CAGR of 17.24%.
The Internet of Things is an advanced concept that uses sensor devices to monitor room temperature, perform complex functioning, control, and record accurate energy consumption, thereby effectively reducing overall maintenance costs.
Energy is the most vital resource for all kinds of industries. Different industrial domains utilize energy in various forms. The US is known as a highly industrialized country, where the chemical sector is one of the largest energy consumers, followed by the refining and mining sectors. Most industries purchase electricity from electric utility firms or power producers. For instance, manufacturing units rely completely on natural gas, petroleum, electricity, coal, and biofuels. Moreover, paper mills use natural gas and black liquor to process heat and generate electricity. We can say that industries generally utilize fossil fuels and renewable energy sources for
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Steam generation or hot water for process heating
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Raw materials to produce plastic or chemicals
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Heat in industrial processes
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Space heating in buildings
Thus, energy is the most useful resource for industrial as well as daily purposes. Also, industrial energy needs are expected to grow by 31% in the next 25 years, accounting for about 38% of total US energy consumption.
The Internet of Things holds a significant share in providing unique solutions for streamlining the information flow, data monitoring, leveraging predictive asset management, reducing costs, lowering manpower, and adding reliability to the traditional systems. Also, IoT offers technological advances in the energy sector for better industrial productivity and enhanced operability. For example, the oil fields situated at remote locations comprise of isolated data centers, which require a centralized management system like cloud for improved information processing across the supply chains.
Energy Monitoring Solution to Fulfill your Industrial Needs
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Real-time energy monitoring
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Consumption patterns
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Future electricity demands
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Equipment maintenance
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Microgrid for optimum power consumption
Most of the manufacturers face unprecedented challenges during industrial processing, which leads to improper management and functioning of the plant. Issues like unidentified energy consumption, lack of energy insights, imbalanced monitories, process complexities, and inadequate stocks for the future, result in equipment downtime and functional failures in most cases. Avoiding or ignoring such challenges can also emerge as the degraded performance of the assets and low industrial output, which impacts the business at all costs.
Hence, you can implement a smart energy solution that allows you to take intelligent decisions to enhance the plant's performance. It offers end-to-end services to effectively transform data from endpoints into valuable information and displays it on the interconnected dashboard. It allows the managers to analyze the data using advanced algorithms and predict outcomes for better understanding.
Talking about the applications of a smart energy monitoring system , IoT is the most favored technology today. The innovative concepts and smart methods to keep a real-time record of energy consumption make IoT the most accepted and applied concept. Let's have a look at the applications of IoT in the energy sector.
- Equipment Monitoring
Equipment monitoring provides insights about the working of your machines. Also, a smart solution detects the downtime or uptime of your machine and maintains a proper record, which can be used for future analysis. It helps you take better decisions regarding your machines’ performance and efficiency.
An IoT powered energy monitoring system is equipped with sensor devices and strong communication gateways to capture data and store it for analysis. IoT is a data-driven approach that displays the information through a smart dashboard and simplifies the managerial tasks. It uses a single platform and allows the owners to access equipment information quickly and easily. Hence, a smart system enables effective monitoring of your machines and identifies potential areas where excess energy is being consumed.
- Increased Asset Efficiency
The industries are leveraging the potential of utilizing traditional assets with modern technologies like IoT. It provides an automated way to retrieve and analyze power quality events. Modernizing the traditional ways of energy management in the industries, the IoT system fetches real-time information through sensors and provides useful information on your smart device.
With the help of a smart energy monitoring system, you can get instant alerts whenever there is unnecessary energy consumption. It consists of a one-stop solution that covers complete information regarding power generation and areas where it is utilized. Also, it is easier to operate the solution from remote locations, which allows convenient access through cloud platforms and smart gadgets.
- Digital Twinning of Equipment
Digital twinning is a concept that uses virtual mapping to analyze the machine's performance, efficiency, and condition. It is emerging as an effective way to perform trials and incur situational-based outcomes before performing the final operation. Digital twinning involves creating a prototype of the equipment which works the same as the original one. The Digital revolution is bringing a lot of changes in the industries along with larger benefits and effectiveness. A smart energy monitoring solution collects various parameters like voltage, current for the equipment, which can be used further by the prototype to incur possible outcomes much before the situation occurs. Hence, the digital twinning of equipment allows the owners to enhance the overall productivity of the industry and monitor the asset performance in real-time.
- Optimum Power Consumption
An energy monitoring solution contains a fully-fledged IoT architecture that helps in adding intelligence to the entire industrial facility. Also, it enables the creation of microgrids for quicker and easier electricity supply to a facility. Microgrids are subparts of the main grid, which allow sufficient energy supply without any obstruction. An IoT powered energy monitoring solution interconnects the microgrid and main grid with your smart device and allows you to easily switch between the two, to fulfill your power requirements based on the load conditions. Hence, you can obtain optimum power consumption without any lags or fluctuations with the help of IoT technology.
Favoring IoT technology to monitor energy consumption in the industries is a cost-effective and performance-efficient method. It helps mitigate the energy inefficiencies and reduces the costs of equipment maintenance. You can implement this solution to make intelligent decisions with the help of the data-driven approach and use data records for future analysis.
