“The Indian electricity sector is on the cusp of a solar-powered revolution.” India Energy Outlook 2021 by International Energy Agency, released in February 2021.
Going digital is the talk of the town in the solar sector. Understanding the benefit and ease of digitalization, many have opted for smart meters and monitoring.
However, the big picture is still missing. Yes, the solar sector has remote monitoring gateways that send alarms, notifications on the operational aspects. But very few solutions provide decision-driven data that emphasizes economic aspects. As a plant owner, it is righteous to have that economic overview and the big picture of the plant.
ETi-SOL is one such software solution that provides meaningful insights and drives important economic decisions in a solar plant. In addition to that, ETi-SOL is a leading brand in terms of hardware retrofits. With a proven track record of retrofits, ETi-SOL is the first choice in the solar sector independent of the available hardware on-site. Here is why.
Adaptive and modular architecture
ETi-SOL is modular and adaptive by design. The data capture and storage, all happens in the application layer and is independent of the end-device hardware or the local available gateways. The data capture endpoint is a machine-to-machine interface and this enables a separation between the application layer and the physical layer. ETi-SOL is structured with application program Interface and is only operating system dependent. A link between the hardware data structure and the ETi-SOL endpoint, and we are good to go.
Scalability
Are you a plant owner who just bought additional sensor/data equipment and finding it difficult to Integrate with the monitoring system you have?
Well, with ETi-SOL you can easily scale upon your hardware trouble-free. ETi-SOL is scalable solution and additional monitoring of devices can be added hassle-free.
ETi-SOL also adapts to the increasing number of users for monitoring your plant. Just write to us on support@enerman.in and leave the integration to us.
Flexibility and easy integration
Owing to the extensible design of ETi-SOL, it gives you a great flexibility and interoperability to pick and choose any hardware you want. The integration happens in the application layer. Meaning, there is no restriction on the type of hardware that you need to buy. We can integrate any Modbus RTU, Modbus TCP, analog signals, digital signals and even RF data. You can choose extensive hardware wired or wireless as required for your plant and ETi-SOL works with everything! We even integrate your existing traditional Programmable logic controllers with our ETi-SOL.
Data acquisition from solar plants
SCADA, “Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition”, literally speaking is a platform to control, monitor and acquire data. While control and monitoring really happens on an application layer, the data acquisition happens on the physical layer. In layman terms, the SCADA solution providers must get their hands dirty and work on the field to provide a comfortable remote monitoring and control.
An end-to-end solution should be able to cover all aspects of data monitoring. ETi-SOL is one such end-to-end solution.
With several Gigawatts of PV (Photo Voltaic) installations, a huge amount of time series data from Solar PV plants such as meteorological data, string-level measurements, transmission loss & generation data are collected. Such lengthy time-series data from solar PV plants are no doubt highly multi-dimensional and challenging to process, but the bigger problem is getting clean data from various sensors in this case Combiner boxes, Inverters, MFMs (Multi-Functional Meters) & WMS (Weather Monitoring Station). That’s where the Majority of the existing SCADA systems are failing!
Internet of Things (IoT) provides a technological platform to achieve this with its ability to gather data from Anything or Everything connected over a network. The emergence of this technology will prove to be a significant differentiator in this race by providing access to the plant remotely, thus increase productivity and maximize the Return of Investment.
Most solar PV plants are in remote locations and may have a very low bandwidth internet connectivity. Existing sensors or specialized sensors placed at critical points in Solar plants, monitor parameters including temperature, DC power, AC power, Voltage, Current, Faults, etc. Sensors that are part of a SCADA system collect, consolidate & logs all the data of a Plant. Hence, to ensure real-time monitoring of the plant, critical data is packetized using special algorithms and pushed to a cloud server. Cloud Server gives the flexibility of preserving/Maintaining huge volume, the velocity of plant’s historical data. The data is also stored at a local control room and can be retrieved in case of communication failure with Cloud Server, thus ensuring reliable and accurate data availability.
Data acquisition is a meticulous task. There are several variants that needs to be considered and worked through to present the data in a sensible manner. Top of the list are the type of protocol, network, data and architecture. Sewing these variants through the above-mentioned variants, here is the information on the bandwidth ETi-SOL covers for data acquisition.
Modbus data
Be it Modbus RTU or Modbus TCP, our handheld in-house gateway, ETi-LOG, has plug-and-play ports for both. While it supports readily the two wire RS-485 system, it can also support the RS-232 with a little converter in between the field end device and ETi-LOG.
Wired SCADA
In this method, all the devices which are to be monitored are connected through cables (OFC/Ethernet) till the Main Control Room and the plant data can be monitored in control room PC. The intelligent data logger, installed in MCR which collects, process and sends to cloud server through a secured protocol using GPRS technology.
Wireless RF Modbus RTU data
If you are worried about the mess the wired chain does for you, we have a solution for that too. We go wireless! With the Radiofrequency (RF) technology, our in-house developed gateway can be fit right next to the end Modbus RTU device. This gateway relays all the data to our in-house developed master gateway at the Main control room via RF. No long cables are required at all.
This received data will be processed and pushed to Cloud server through a secured protocol using GPRS technology. We can optionally route the collected data to a Local SCADA system as well.
Retrofit: third-party data
Already invested in hardware for your plant? Or planning to scale your existing SCADA network? No worries. ETi-SOL is compatible with most of the leading gateways in the market. Not only that. We can also get and post data from another machine-to-machine interface like File transfer protocol (FTP), Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), and even REST APIs.
Owing to its modular design, ETi-SOL can integrate the data provided by third-party hardware/platform on the application layer and provide insightful data without any design or structural trade-offs.
Third party SCADA integration can be achieved in three ways:
- Push method: In this method, we will set up FTP server and provide login credentials to Third Party SCADA vendor. The Third-Party SCADA vendor should PUSH plants data to FTP server in near Realtime. The format of the Data should either in CSV (Comma Separated Value) or JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format. This data will be read and stored on our cloud servers.
- Pull method / API: We will call third-party SCADA APIs for the extraction of data for the particular plant. The Third-party SCADA vendor should provide REST API credentials to us for pulling data.
- Scripting: In this method using the client credentials we can run the software on client’s computer (Scripting) and extract the data/download the data automatically every 5 min interval from the existing Web Based SCADA software.
Input-output: analog, digital signals
ETi-SOL not only works with standard “digital data”, but also leverages and works with Analog or digital signals. When said as Input signal analog or digital, it can be the temperature from the transformer or the Irradiation from the weather sensor, or any status of a breaker. It works with it all.
ETi-SOL can also control the status of breakers and similar devices via output digital signals.
With just a converter between the digital Modbus RTU data and the Input-output signal, ETi-SOL can both monitor and control the end devices with the aforesaid signal types.
ETi-EDGE
While all the above said SCADA architecture requires a fixed investment and regular maintenance costs, ETi-EDGE requires little to zero maintenance! ETi-EDGE is new age lightweight IoT SCADA developed by EnerMAN Technologies. It requires just one ETi-LOG and computer in the Plant and no Internet required. All the necessary packages are installed in the Linux-based machine at the Plant and the ETi-EDGE is good to go.
ETi-EDGE is the newest addition to EnerMAN Technologies world-class products. This can still be accessed remotely by static IP or third-party remote monitoring tools. It is a light version of ETi-SOL. If you are looking for a simple monitoring tool with no or very little Annual maintenance costs, ETi-EDGE should be your choice.
From your field to your hand
Real-time data of your Solar plant at your fingertips…
Living in the 21st century, we are dependent on electronic gadgets and electrical appliances like never before, but all our gadgets need energy, don’t they?
Not everyone thinks about the source of the energy they use, people just assume that we have enough and continue to use it until it’s gone. Presently we have many sources of energy, but the only one that lasts until the sun burns bright is Solar energy. Not many Solar plant owners are aware of their plant’s generation on a day to day basis.
And now our IoT platform-based solution makes life simpler & easier. Just like how you use WhatsApp, Facebook, or watch YouTube, you can now monitor and keep track of the energy generated in your field, from home.
Installation
To fetch data from the field, we have an in-house developed Intelligent IoT data logger (ETi-LOG). This device can be installed in your inverter rooms. It is small, compact, and easy to mount. Our installation team will install it in a couple of hours.
All we need is the datasheets of your devices and your devices must support either TCP or Modbus RTU communication.
ETi-SOL SCADA & how it works
As the name says, after configuration of the device with details from your plant, the device starts collecting real-time data from your inverters, String Combiner Boxes (SCBs), Weather station, Multi-Function Meters (MFMs) and other devices on your plant. This data will be sent to our cloud server where it will be processed and made presentable. This data can be monitored and alerts can be configured according to your requirement.
Access the data from anywhere, anytime
You will be given a login id and password, through which you can log in to our website where Real-time data from your plant will be shown on Graphs, Pie Charts, blocks, and tables.
You can access your plant data at string level granularity with real-time analysis. And it also allows the user to download the same in multiple formats like .csv, .pdf, .xlsx etc.
If you have multiple plants, you can view data of all your plants on one screen, with important details from the respective plants, you can just select the plant whose details you wish to see by just clicking on the name from the list of plants or by selecting a plant from the map.
Our app
Our solution is not limited to PC/Laptop, you can also view data of your plant and access all the features mentioned above, by just installing our app from the Google Play Store.
Apart from all of the above features, we also add/customize features according to your requirement, we also have a helpline number to assist you at all times and from our new app, you can raise a ticket about a particular issue, which will be resolved by our service team in No time.
In summary
Overall, be it Modbus, wired, wireless, analog, digital, retrofit, or one computer, ETi-SOL is a solution that is compatible with all the case scenarios on the field. EnerMAN, with its informed knowledge on operational aspects of a solar plant, is a true end-to-end solution provider. With the Pandemic striking the world, ETi-SOL is the best choice for going digital and remote. To talk to us on this please write to sales@enerman.in.
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