We start off with a small factory which, as an example, will be called “EnerManage LLC”. It’s composed of one machine (energy output) and a solar panel (energy input).

Good news: this IIoT energy monitoring can be scaled to any size, both in terms of equipment and geographies, with little to no changes in the types of Flux Assets used.

Their equipment is outfitted with energy measurement devices, so the plant’s technical team can gather individual values from the corresponding electrical cabinets.They chose devices that communicate through Modbus.  But the people over at “EnerManage LLC” want to work smarter, not harder:

But the people over at “EnerManage LLC” want to work smarter, not harder:  

STEP-BY-STEP

1. Downlload coreflux hub  + Coreflux mqtt broker (on local device)*

In order to scale this solution without having to manually check each equipment one by one, a Data Hub is required.They prepare a local MQTT broker. That broker is ready to receive the data from all devices.Coreflux offers a perfectly simple solution: install our Hub on a machine, which provides a broker out-of-the-box.

2. Modbus Connector on local edge devices - MQTT Broker

Modbus-2-MQTT assets are installed and configured to:
On one end, access the energy measurement devices on electrical cabinets and gather data;

On the other, communicate their data back to the MQTT broker that was previously prepared.There, “EnerManage LLC” now has a single source where all data can be consulted:- How much the machine is consuming;

And how much energy the solar panel is producing.

3. MSSQL-2-MQTT connector to register this values

Historical values for this information can be quite valuable for the renewable energy management of the company in the future.

A Coreflux database Connector can be installed on the machine, to gather all real-time data into query-able data.
A MSSQL Connector, for example:

Imagine being able to inform Management of what the going prices were on a specific hour of a specific day, to compare with production costs and sales values...
The true Industry 4.0 cross-discipline value.

4. Secure MQTT Bridge Connector to funnel data to/from future sources

From here on, “EnerManage LLC” is set to work with the energy-related data in multiple ways, but they need to do so in a secure manner.

We continue this process by installing an MQTT Bridge.
This ensures only the desired data is passed along the data pipeline, through encrypted or certificate-protected channels.

Next steps will likely include:- funnelling this data to a dashboard;
- performing additional data transformations;
- manage production with the lowest energy cost schedules.

When you’re ready for those, we have you covered as well.