Current situation analysis
Colleges and universities are bases that shoulder the heavy responsibility of education, scientific research and social services. They are an important part of society and a major consumer of resources and energy. According to statistics, the energy and water consumption of colleges and universities exceeds the average social consumption. Taking energy consumption as an example, the average energy consumption per college student is about 5 times the national average energy consumption. At the same time, due to the weak energy metering infrastructure and backward energy management model, colleges and universities have serious waste of water resources, electric coal and other energy, which is mainly manifested in the following aspects:
u Weak energy metering infrastructure
Many colleges and universities have weak energy metering infrastructure. Most of the water and electricity metering has only one-level metering. Most of the water and electricity consumption has no second-level metering, or there is a second-level metering, but the metering instruments are all mechanical meters, which need to be collected manually. It takes a long time to collect data manually, resulting in untimely data collection, resulting in the alarming water and electricity costs of colleges and universities, and it is not clear who consumes and when it is consumed. This also brings great difficulties to the school's scientific energy management.
The infrastructure such as water supply, power supply, and gas supply is seriously old and aging, and the water supply pipelines and facilities are rusted, and there is serious leakage and waste. The power supply system is even more prominent. Although the power supply network has been renovated many times, the capacity expansion is still significantly behind the needs of teaching and scientific research. The aging and overload of the lines are very serious, often causing power outages and other accidents. However, due to the weak energy metering infrastructure, the above problems were not discovered in time, which not only caused energy waste, but also increased safety hazards.
u Backward energy management model
Many universities have not implemented a strict energy quota management system. No matter how much or how little the department uses, no matter how much the teachers and students waste, the school pays for it, resulting in a weak energy-saving awareness among teachers and students, and the phenomenon of "ever-burning lights and long-flowing water" is common, and water and electricity are wasted seriously. This in turn hinders the development of energy metering in universities, resulting in backward energy metering infrastructure and incomplete energy metering in universities.
u Unbalanced development of energy metering
Due to the different levels of attention paid to energy metering, the advancement of energy management models, and the degree of capital investment in energy metering infrastructure construction in different universities, the development of energy metering is extremely unbalanced. Some universities have not even built up the secondary metering completely, and are still in the mode of mechanical metering and manual reading; some universities have established the tertiary metering, but are still in the stage of metering equipment transformation, and mechanical meters, electronic prepaid card meters and intelligent remote meters coexist; some universities are leading the development of university energy metering, and have fully established the tertiary metering, and all of them are intelligent remote meters, which can read energy consumption data online in real time and control energy consumption in real time. At the same time, an energy data center is established, and the whole school uniformly establishes a quantitative energy quota management system, implements the management principle of "quota energy use, saving rewards, and excess self-payment", implements the management principle of "who uses, who pays", and implements the management principle of "tiered charging, excess price increase".
2. Market opportunities and challenges
In recent years, with the frequent occurrence of energy crises, global warming and major natural disasters, environmental and resource issues have attracted widespread attention from the international community, and the development of low-carbon and green economy has become the theme of world economic development. The Chinese government attaches great importance to energy conservation and emission reduction. In April 2008, the Ministry of Construction issued five guidelines, including the "Technical Guidelines for the Collection of Itemized Energy Consumption Data for Office Buildings of State Organs and Large Public Buildings", to guide the construction of the Itemized Energy Consumption Data Collection System for Large Public Buildings. In May 2008, the Ministry of Construction and the Ministry of Education jointly formulated the "Management and Technical Guidelines for the Construction of Energy-Saving Campuses in Colleges and Universities", which provide management and technical guidance for the planning, design, construction, management, education and popularization of energy-saving campus construction. It has made clear guidance on the direction of energy conservation work in each school. From the requirements of the "Technical Guidelines for Energy-Saving Campuses" and other policies, the requirements of installing metering devices throughout the school and establishing an energy consumption statistics management system account for a large proportion. This is a rare market opportunity for metering instrument companies. There are thousands of colleges and universities in the country. If each college has an average of 10,000 metering monitoring points, the market size is tens of billions. However, universities have the characteristics of large land area, large number of colleges and departments at all levels, wide distribution range, and high energy management requirements. This also makes university energy measurement different from the traditional water and electricity measurement of traditional power companies and water companies. It is also a huge challenge for traditional metering instrument companies, mainly manifested in the following aspects:
u Many types of metering instruments
There are many types of energy consumption instruments in universities, including water meters, electricity meters, gas meters, heat meters, steam flow meters and other instruments. Each type of instrument is divided into many types and specifications of instruments. Taking water and electricity meters as an example, water meters include cold water meters, hot water meters, pure water meters and flow meters. The caliber of cold water meters may range from 15 to 300. Electricity meters include multi-function meters with various mutual inductance ratios, simple multi-function meters and single-phase meters, etc. This puts forward the requirement of diversified instrument types for instrument companies.
u Real-time metering data
Colleges and universities are a microcosm of a city, with diversified energy users. For example, various colleges and universities, various administrative departments, student dormitories, faculty dormitories, canteens and restaurants, public service departments, special laboratories, school hospitals, commercial shops and other energy users have different energy use needs, which also puts forward diversified management needs for the energy management of colleges and universities. Some public service departments use it for free, and the school pays for it. Some departments implement quota management, and the management principle of "quota energy use, saving rewards, and excess self-payment" is adopted. Some departments implement prepaid real-time settlement, and pay as much as you pay. At the same time, as an energy-saving demonstration base, colleges and universities have put forward high requirements for the management of energy waste. How to timely discover the phenomenon of "long-burning lights and long-flowing water", how to timely discover the phenomenon of stealing electricity and water, how to timely discover the phenomenon of pipe network leakage and burst pipes, how to timely discover the phenomenon of cable aging and leakage, etc., all put forward high requirements for the real-time collection of energy metering data. At present, colleges and universities that have done a good job in energy metering have realized energy data collection with an hour as the metering cycle, and low-voltage distribution rooms have also achieved real-time monitoring and metering of energy consumption at the minute level. This puts forward higher requirements for both software and hardware for enterprises that traditionally use monthly energy consumption settlement and collection cycles.
u Personalized metering
Due to the diversified needs of energy management in colleges and universities, energy metering instruments in colleges and universities are required to have many additional functions in addition to metering functions. Taking the electric meter as an example, for safety reasons, the school restricts students from using high-power equipment with safety hazards such as electric stoves and electric heating rods, and requires the electric meter to have a malicious load identification function and automatic alarm. Some schools, for humanistic considerations, require the lights to be turned off at night and the switches to be closed at time in the morning, but for the bathroom, electricity is required to be available 24 hours a day, and the electric meter is required to have a dual-channel dual-button function and many other similar personalized requirements, which poses a challenge to how enterprises can quickly respond to the personalized requirements of colleges and universities.
III. Solution
Based on the actual situation of weak energy metering infrastructure in colleges and universities, uneven metering development, tight funds for energy metering transformation, diversified energy metering instruments, short energy metering collection cycle, and personalized requirements for metering instruments, we put forward the construction idea of "comprehensive planning, distributed implementation, energy saving, and metering first". First of all, we need to unify the planning and design of the overall solution for university energy metering from the strategic height of sustainable energy development and energy conservation in universities. Secondly, under the condition of limited energy metering transformation funds, we suggest to implement the overall solution in different regions and stages, giving priority to transforming areas with serious energy waste and fast construction efficiency. Furthermore, we believe that energy conservation must first implement quantitative energy management, know who consumes how much water resources and energy at what time, and provide accurate, reliable and unified energy data through metering to provide services for scientific decision-making for energy conservation.
Our company has proposed a system solution integrating software and hardware from multiple aspects such as technological advancement, product stability and reliability, system economy, platform applicability, etc. It not only has a variety of metering instruments such as water, electricity, gas, and heat developed independently, but also has independently developed data concentrators and digital energy management system software for universities, as shown in the following figure:
From the perspective of the dozens of universities we have successfully implemented, the following aspects are more important:
u Data collection success rate
From the perspective of the universities we have already implemented, the data collection success rate is above 99%, which is mainly due to the fact that we use the MBUS data bus for metering data transmission. The MBUS data bus can not only transmit data but also power the instrument. The MBUS data bus has no polarity, which makes engineering construction and debugging convenient, maintenance simple, and very economical.
u Timeliness of energy metering data collection
In the universities we have implemented, all energy metering data is collected and transmitted in hours, which is very stable and reliable.
u System openness and compatibility
We mainly design the system openness and compatibility from three levels. The first is the development at the instrument level. All our instruments are designed and developed according to national standards or industry standards. As long as the data concentrator that meets national standards or industry standards can collect the energy metering data of our instruments; the second is the development at the concentrator level. Our concentrator is designed and developed according to national standards or industry standards, and can read instruments from other manufacturers that meet national standards or industry standards; the third is the openness and compatibility at the software level. We have achieved the docking of one-card software from multiple manufacturers.
u Massive data processing capability
Many universities have tens of thousands of metering and monitoring nodes, and the data space is calculated in G units. This requires the system database to have the ability to process massive data. It is recommended to use a large relational database.
u Software function personalization
Different universities have different energy management methods and different energy management needs, which put forward personalized requirements for energy management systems. In order to meet the personalized needs of universities, our digital energy management system adopts modular design and designs many personalized functions for universities, such as batch distribution of free water and electricity, multiple energy settlement methods, support for prepayment, postpayment, tiered pricing, etc., support for unified management of malignant loads, support for batch timed power-off at night and batch timed power-off in the morning, support for abnormal energy consumption alarm, support for multiple energy consumption analysis and statistical reports, etc.
In the spirit of "openness, cooperation, and win-win", we are willing to work with universities and other metering instrument companies to make efforts for the development of university energy metering.
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By:Doing