Lead Performer: Argonne National Laboratory – Lemont, IL
FY17 DOE Funding: $1,000,000
Project Term: October 1, 2016 – September 30, 2018
Funding Type: Lab Award
Project Objective
Advancing pervasive, revenue-grade submetering such that all equipment and plug loads are being metered with sufficient accuracy for unique identification will provide essential data to maximize and verify energy savings. It will also provide critical information on the state and usage patterns of specific equipment to enable monitoring-based commissioning and facilitate the optimization of fault detection and diagnostics of operational faults along with control strategies and integration with the electric grid. While fairly low-cost submetering equipment is now available, these devices are neither revenue grade nor include the necessary hardware connectivity to integrate into a building management system (BMS) or some other software dashboard. Single phase meters that meet the 2% accuracy for revenue grade are now available for just under $100 each, but that cost does not include a wireless connectivity or power line communication (PLC) base station or any software for monitoring.
The Argonne National Laboratory-led team will leverage existing proof-of-concept component solutions for compact, low-cost, single phase (AC and DC load) sensors and metering devices developed for electric vehicle charging applications to develop revenue-grade submetering solutions for all reasonably sized (<480vac, <200A) building equipment, systems, and plug loads. This project will develop and test a prototype end-use submetering device that will provide a flexible platform with a total installation cost of <$10 per phase metered devices (i.e. including wireless or PLC communication hardware and monitoring software) and 0.2% accuracy for building applications. Innovations to the metering board design include minimizing component count and connectivity with a state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip (SoC) metrology and combining several required measurement and control features into a single compact chip.
Contacts
DOE Technology Manager: Harry Bergmann
Principal Investigator: Theodore Bohn, Argonne National Laboratory