Visualizing Invisible Energy Costs
Problem Statement: In large-scale manufacturing, electricity bills are a major operating cost, yet they often remain a “Black Box.” Factory managers struggle with manual meter readings, lack of real-time visibility into power consumption trends, and inability to correlate energy spikes with specific production processes.
The Challenge: The client needed a centralized system to collect data from multiple Digital Multimeters distributed across the factory. The system had to handle high-frequency data (Voltage, Current, Power, THD), process it for cost analysis, and present it on a responsive web dashboard accessible from anywhere.
Our Solution: Event-Driven IoT Platform
We architected “Factory Insight,” a robust monitoring solution built on the Node-RED ecosystem for reliable data acquisition and Vue.js (Quasar Framework) for a high-performance frontend user interface.
Key Features
- Real-time Telemetry: Live monitoring of electrical parameters including Voltage (V), Current (A), Power (kW), Power Factor, and Frequency (Hz).
- Power Quality Analysis: Monitors Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) to detect “Dirty Power” that could damage sensitive machinery.
- Cost Intelligence: Automatically calculates estimated electricity costs ($/THB) based on consumption, helping in budget forecasting.
- Advanced Reporting: Generates Daily, Weekly, and Monthly energy reports with “Export to Excel/CSV” functionality for further audit.
Key Technologies Implemented
| Technology | Role in System |
|---|---|
| Vue.js 3 (Quasar) | Responsive & Fast Frontend Dashboard |
| Node-RED | IoT Gateway, Data Aggregation, and API Backend |
| MySQL | Historical Data Storage |
| Modbus RTU | Communication protocol with Power Meters |
Business Results
- Data Integrity: Implemented “Gap Filling” logic (
aggregateBackfillSequential.js) to ensure continuous data streams even during network hiccups. - Operational Efficiency: Replaced manual logbooks with automated digital reports, saving hours of engineering time per week.
- Predictive Maintenance: THD monitoring allows early detection of motor or drive anomalies before failure occurs.
Expert Insight: Reliability is key in data logging. We utilized Node-RED not just as a smart aggregator that pre-processes raw Modbus data into hourly and daily summaries, significantly reducing the query load on the MySQL database for long-term reporting.
Ready to optimize your factory’s energy usage? Contact us at: wisit.paewkratok@gmail.com