DRAFT

Entities and devices

EMS platform manages telemetry and attributes data for assets or devices. Assets can be virtual, devices normally represent actual things.

The architecture of the EMS platform is designed to manage energy sites with solar, storage, consumption and other optional devices like ev chargers or HVAC which affect energy efficiency and can be managed via platform.

Assets and devices for energy site

Naming conventions

EMS platform requires entities (devices and assets) to have a unique name, so we use a naming convention:

  • Each site has a unique site prefix like “EE001” (2 letter country code and a unique number). This is defined as an asset assigned to customer.
  • Each site has 4 fixed virtual nodes to support energy management (see below) “EE001 Meter”
  • Nodes can contain multiple Blocks (of devices) or the same type.
  • Blocks contain multiple devices of the same type. This standard site > nodes > blocks > devices hierarchy allows us to organize our EMS data in a common format and to develop advanced dashboards which can be reused for every customer site.

Site nodes

We define 4 virtual asset nodes for each site which represent key data for energy management needed for energy optimizer service providers and for tenant level dashboards:

  • POC meter node (total measured energy and power at grid connection)
  • Solar production node (total of all solar inverters on site)
  • Plant consumptions node (total of all consumption on site - via meters)
  • BESS node (total of all BESS inverters on site + available power for charge or discharge + total of all batteries on site - available charge or discharge capacity + State of Charge)

Each node represents the total for all relevant devices for the site: so EE001 Solar should show all solar production for the site (ie 2 PV blocks – one with 5 inverters, another one with 6) and BESS should show all inverters and batteries capacities available (for example 1 or 2 BESS blocks, each with 5 inverters and 5 battery strings).

Devices profiles

We register site and fixed nodes as assets. Blocks and devices are registered as devices, even if sometimes a block does not represent a device:

  • solar blocks are groups, there is no device for the block
  • bess blocks are device with a controller and the block may have a meter and multiple strings

We have asset or device profiles for all standard nodes, block and devices expected:

  • nodes
  • blocks
  • devices

Device profiles are used to categorize devices and define standard attributes and custom device dashboard for each device profile.

hierarchical relations

EMS platform allows to define "Contains" relationship to create a hierarchiy site > nodes > blocks > devices. This is useful to enable hierarchical navigation in Dashboards and data rollup.

Exceptions:

  • The site controller device is attached under site directly and acts as gateway (it pubishes data for all devices connected to it).
  • The meter node contains no blocks, usually just one meter device.

Devices for site

Devices are almost always organized in blocks: The first site has one BESS block (ES01) with 5 AC battery strings, two PV blocks (PV01 and PV02) each with solar inverters, and a POC meter and a site controller (gateway):

See Devices configuration XLS sheet for the site for latest configuration.