CBI-electric (Circuit Breaker Industries)

New Managed Smart Metering system from CBI :energy launched to bring sense to electricity consumption at commercial properties and large solar systems

CBI :energy, a new player in the energy management space, today launched its first solution offering at Power & Electricity Africa. The flexible, low-cost, Cloud-connected Managed Smart Metering system is aimed at the commercial real estate, office and solar energy markets. The system enables operational and technical staff, as well as business managers, property owners and managing agents of multi-tenanted sites, to gather, analyse and act on real time electricity consumption data across a site, or to focus on groups or individual electrical loads.

Consisting of single and three-phase connected electricity meters communicating wirelessly with a managed Cloud infrastructure, the Managed Smart Metering system, developed and manufactured in South Africa by :energy, is designed for medium to large commercial implementation. The compact, billing-grade smart meters allow for full four-quadrant Class 1 (better than 1% accuracy) metering of both electricity generation and consumption in real time at Points of Supply, sub-DBs and individual and groups of loads. Data is generated at one-minute intervals for key metrics which include real and reactive power and energy, voltage, current and power factor. This telemetry for each device is then rated to give detailed current and historic information on the customer’s Rands and cents costs for peak, off-peak and standard time of use tariffs.

“Electricity has become a massive and unsustainable cost of business, and we urgently need to change how we use it. Finding vast amounts of data on the generation, distribution and trade of energy is easy. But there is astonishingly little information on how electricity is consumed – by whom, for what, where, and how much. If we don’t know more about how we use energy, we’ll never make the behaviour changes needed for a carbon zero future,” says Roger Hislop, Energy Management Systems Executive at CBI-electric: low voltage.

Installation is fast and easy; the “Fit & Form” compact energy meters can be deployed with minimal disruption to business operations and need no changes to be made to electrical or building infrastructure. The :energy Managed Smart Metering devices use proven Wi-Fi technology, communicating either over corporate wireless network, or aggregated over a single LTE wireless router. Most smart meters today must either be hard-wired to a data network or use 3G or LTE mobile phone technologies for connectivity which add considerable operating expense and do not function in building basements and other low-signal areas.

The Managed Smart Metering system has been designed to be simple to integrate with other software systems through the open API provided by :energy.

It simplifies energy management, simplifies cost management, and simplifies gathering of the detailed data that is needed to comply with new regulations coming into force for building energy management. Most notable of these is the ISO 50000 standard, and the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) that will become a legal requirement for commercial buildings over 2,000m2 by the end of this year.

“There is an old saying in the electricity industry – the cheapest Watt to generate is the Watt you don’t use. This new Managed Smart Metering system puts electricity consumers back in control of their spend,” concludes Hislop.

The :energy Managed Smart Metering solution has a recommended price of R2,078 for the single-phase connected meter, and R4440 for the three-phase, which includes three years of the managed service subscription.

About CBI :energy

CBI :energy is a division of CBI electric: low voltage, a South African designer, manufacturer and supplier of quality low voltage electrical distribution, protection, and control equipment, including circuit breakers, residential current devices, surge protection, wiring accessories, and metering products. Headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, the company is a subsidiary of JSE-listed industrial group Reunert, with international operations across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and USA.

For more information about CBI :energy visit www.cbi.energy.

CBI :energy Contacts: Deepesh Dhanjee deepesh.dhanjee@cbi-electric.com

Solution Users

• Facility managers and operations staff needing automated, accurate collection of electricity consumption and generation data, billing-grade metering, energy efficiency reporting compliance and faster response to power issues.
• Business management at a site or the group head office requiring detailed performance indicators on both operational effectiveness and energy usage across sites, benchmarkable with common metrics (e.g., kgCO2, kWh/m2, Total Cost of Occupation).
• Owners and managing agents of multi-tenanted sites requiring individual, granular and detailed electricity consumption or generation data and performance metrics for reporting, accounting and billing of tenants.

:energy Managed Smart Metering System: Solution Overview

• Detailed billing-grade telemetry at one-minute intervals: Real and Power, Real and Reactive Energy, Voltage, Current, Power Factor and Device Temperature, plus diagnostic metadata.
• Standards compliant, quality hardware to monitor and meter up to 80A in-line or use an external CT for larger loads (ratio configurable).
• Highly resilient fully managed energy metering and monitoring solution specifically designed for medium to large commercial implementation with powerful Cloud-based management and monitoring dashboards.
• Receive notifications by email, SMS or push about generation and consumption activity via user-configured, centrally-managed rules, policies, dashboards and reports.
• Detailed visibility on actual and potential energy and cost savings via an intelligent rating and billing system, with configurable business-focused benchmarks.
• Wirelessly connected metering devices communicate via corporate or IoT-dedicated Wi-Fi network.
• Automatically generate source data and reports for ‘Green Certification’, building Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) and ISO 50000 certification.
• Data-driven decision making from detailed energy telemetry and analytics to change behaviour and drive sustainable energy efficiency and energy saving initiatives.