Electrical Power & Protection


Omniflex cures NHS energy monitoring headache

September 2012 Electrical Power & Protection

When Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in the UK decided to collect energy consumption data in real-time from over one hundred energy meters around its two hospitals, it chose Omniflex to provide the server and communications infrastructure.

The challenge

The NHS Foundation Trust wanted to upgrade its existing energy reporting over the two hospitals to obtain usage data every 30 minutes, reliably over the entire site. There was a mix of existing intelligent meters and pulse meters that could not be replaced due to the cost constraints. Furthermore, the Trust wanted to minimise network installation costs, by utilising its existing Ethernet backbone, but a limitation of the number of available IP addresses was also a consideration that had to be taken into account. Network downtime is a reality and dealing with these network outages without losing the 30 minute updates was also a challenge to be overcome.

The solution

Omniflex supplied and commissioned an on-site 'Omnergy Data Server' and 13 metering gateways to communicate with more than one hundred new and existing energy meters around the two sites, counting pulses from the pulse meters and polling the smart meters for the data. Http://tinyurl.com/bo352n5 for full details on how Omniflex provided a cost effective solution for monitoring energy usage and presenting the data to the facilities manager.

For more information contact Ian Loudon, Omniflex, +27 (0)31 207 7466, [email protected], www.omniflex.com



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