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Description
FactoryTalk Optix can directly read real time power data from the PowerMonitor 1000 and PowerMonitor 5000.
This video demonstrates how to interface Optix with the PowerMonitors without the need for a PLC in the middle.
Transcript
(00:01) In this video, I want to show how Factory Talk Optics can directly connect to a power monitor, either the 1000 or 5,000 model. The power monitors are Alan Bradley products that can take in PTS and CTS and you know determine power um values such as voltage, current um KW, KVRs, power factor etc. And when I say directly connect, that means that we don’t have to actually have a PLC in the middle.
(00:36) Factor talk optics can directly pull the tags out of the power monitors. And this gives us a pretty interesting um, you know, use case where optics can, you know, basically pull that information out and act as a bit of an an energy um, you know, energy manager. You can essentially visualize your energy data. You know, you can create HTML 5 dashboards.
(01:04) Um, you could, you know, use Optics to to pull that power data out of your facility and then publish it on MQTT or through an OPCA server to some other supervisory system. Um, you can use it to log your Power uh data to like such as an embedded or cloud-based Influx DB database. um create PDF reports from it and uh you could you know would if you’re using something such as the optics panel or the optics edge device you could you know use remote access to remotely connect to your facility and view your power data. So provides for some pretty
(01:42) interesting um uh solutions. Now, to um to make this work, it’s pretty straightforward. Um and I’ll demonstrate that. Um one of the first things you want to see is that you do have to kind of be familiar with the um the kind of the tables that are inside of those power monitors. So, uh this is the power monitor 5000 users manual.
(02:13) And in appendix A, there are u numerous tables that have all kinds of different tags that you could kind of reference and and read from the power monitor. Some are configuration tags, some are metering um results tags. Um so you do have to kind of be a little bit familiar with what what you’re looking for out of the power monitor.
(02:37) Um, so to make this work, we’re going to have to know this um this PCC uh file number, which is kind of the table number. Um, so in this case, if I want to just read the, you know, the real time voltage, you know, numbers out of the power monitor, I want to reference this F53 table. And then I will need to know the element number um which is essentially kind of like the array element that I want to read.
(03:08) So the structure we’re going to use is going to be this F53 and then a colon and then the the array element or the offset. So for instance, if I would like to read my um you know lineto- line voltage V1 to V2 voltage, I would need to reference F53 colon 8. If I want to read, you know, aphase current, then that would be F53 col.
(03:41) And appendix A is full of lots of different tables. So there’s lots of information to to pull from. So I’m just going to you know use this as a real kind of straightforward uh example. So um once we kind of understand that table um you know I am connected to a real power monitor 5000 right now. It is using the demo uh feature. So there is a you have the ability to enable what’s called a demo mode in the power monitor 5000 and it creates simulated voltage and current and power data.
(04:15) So, it’s going to act like I’m getting real data here. And this is I’m connected to the to this just the um device manager page. And this is what the numbers are right now. Looking you know like a a V uh one or or A to B phase line to line A to B is reading at 481 uh volts. And then you can see it just it’s jumping around. All right.
(04:41) So, we’ve got a real power monitor. We’ve got some simulated data. There it is in my RS links. This IP address is 10.0.0.52. So that’s all I really need to know is the IP address of the power monitor and the tables that I want to read data from. So now on to optics. So, to make this work, we’re actually going to um even though I say we don’t have to have a controller in the middle, we are going to use the COM driver.
(05:11) And we’re going to use the Microlologgics 1400 COM driver. So, we’re just going to use that driver to connect, but we don’t have to have a Microlologgix 1400 uh in the middle. We’re not talking to the Microlologgics. We’re talking directly to the power monitor. So to do this I could uh I could come to the dashboard and use the wizard.
(05:33) I could rightclick on com drivers and say add new. I’ll go ahead and use the the wizard. We’ll say a new station. We are going to choose the microcontroller station. That is the the uh station for either the micro 800 or the microlologgics or slick 500 PLC’s. I’m going to say next. Um, we will choose our controller type to a Microlologgix 1400.
(06:01) And we’ll give it the IP address. And in this case, for my uh power monitor, it is going to be that. Um, and then I’m going to go ahead and rename it. I’m just going to rename it to PM 5000. That’ll be just the name of the station. And everything else here is going to stay the same. We’ll say next. Now you have a choice of browsing or uploading the tags.
(06:30) This is not something that we can do. We can’t upload tags out of the power monitor. So we’re going to just say next and exit. So what we will have to do though is we will have to come under our com driver and the one we just created here and we are going to have to come to the tags folder and we are going to have to create a a variable and we’re going to create a microcontroller tag. And now we have this tag over here.
(07:00) We can of course rename it. Um perhaps I want to call this um V uh A uh to B um voltage. It’s probably not a good name, but just good enough for demonstration. Um so that’s our tag name. Now over here, we don’t have a lot to work with. we just have symbol name and then the array update mode. So for the symbol name, we’re going to refer back to our user manual.
(07:39) And again that we’re using the the the file number uh or table F53 and we’re going to look at the ETH element in that file or or table. So our structure here is going to be simply F53 colon 8. That’s all we got to do. So it’s going to read uh F53 and it’s going to read the eighth element in that table and store it in this tag.
(08:16) So to to watch this, you know, actually work, if if I were to come to the main window and if I were to go ahead and just add a a label here, um, I can take this tag and display it in this label. And we’ll go ahead and make this a little bit bigger so we can actually see it. So all I got to do start the emulator and we will see that we are getting a voltage reading right we’re pulling data right out of that power monitor and displaying it here into that tag.
(08:56) And if we were to go back and look at our um real time power monitor uh voltage here we see this is 486. This is fluctuating um much faster. It has a much faster update rate than what my uh device manager is doing here of course. So um so but I am getting uh real time data out of the power monitor in Feder Talk optics without the need of a PLC uh to act as an interposing uh device.
(09:27) So again once I have this data in optics um I have a lot of capability with optics to again do things such as data logging for historical trending of our of our power data. I can um you know use any of the uh data communication capabilities to pass this data onto other systems uh using things such as MQTT or OPCUA or even some other PLC driver.
(09:56) Um and you know could do uh things such as uh you know make this a web you know a web presentation engine to be able to view this data you know across the network or remote access in to just view this data you know when I’m offsite.