Overview

Energy monitoring is a way of determining the trend of energy utilization. It is basically an energy metering method embodied with a recording procedure.  The traditional approach of energy monitoring involves the use of an energy meter, popularly known as the kilo-watt hour meter at which regular readings are taken at fixed time intervals. This method is very manual in nature, time consuming, and is prone to error. Recent advancements in application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) attracted many researches in solid state energy metering to create various techniques for energy measurement. The goal of energy measurement is to improve the accuracy and reliability of readings over time especially in a hostile environment, where the meter is located. The demand for the improvement of energy measurement techniques is both stimulated by the utility provider and the consumer.

The use of sensor networks has great advantage on enterprise wide energy monitoring due to the fact that the sensors can be deployed on a vast and even on remote and low accessibility areas. It can be left unattended and configuration can be done remotely. The use of sensor networks brings down the cost of system maintenance and data acquisition since the means of collecting energy information can be done automatically instead of the manual reading of electric meters. Deployment of sensor networks may represent a substantially more economical method for conducting long-term studies than traditional manual methods.

             Monitoring system features like collecting, storing, and analyzing the collected data from several remote monitoring devices enable a company to manage many of the operational and energy costs associated with the electrical distribution system and electrical equipment. This labor-saving means of monitoring power, diagnosing root causes of electrical failure, and trending usage can now be performed at a centralized level, where company-wide money-saving decisions can be made. Increasing the awareness on the organizational base costs as they apply to electrical usage, production costs, root causes of failure, or poor power quality, is a key step in controlling escalating energy bills, maintenance and/or repair costs, and inefficiencies.