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Monitor Lighting Usage Proactively with C.A 1110

Given the energy crisis in the UK, it’s time to stay on top of energy consumption & bills! Modern light meters such as C.A 1110 help deliver & monitor adequate lighting whilst ensuring you see significant savings in electricity bills. Learn more about Chauvin Arnoux test and measurement equipment via our YouTube videos.

Taking the first steps towards green buildings

In his summer statement, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a billion-pound programme to help improve energy efficiency in schools, hospitals and other public buildings. Called ‘The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme’, the programme, which is part of UK’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the public sector by 50%, is expected to see substantial investments in energy efficiency and heating upgrades over the next year. ‘The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme’ is laudable in its objectives, as the world as a whole is dealing with an unprecedented ecological crisis. However, perhaps the first thing facilities managers should invest in when looking to improve energy efficiency is an instrument that allows them to accurately measure and record energy usage. Having an initial benchmark – before embarking on any changes and upgrades – is essential for measuring improvement and progress through time. A portable energy logger (PEL) like the Chauvin Arnoux PEL103 is the ideal tool for accurately monitoring power consumption and much more, including harmonic levels, voltage imbalance and power factor. In addition, by using a PEL103 across entire buildings and recording the results over time, facilities managers will be able to gain detailed and revealing insights into what’s actually contributing to their energy bills. A PEL103 can be installed quickly and easily in a distribution cabinet where it can, for example, monitor circuits for lighting, HVAC, display screens, computer systems and more. If it is to deliver its full range of benefits, the PEL should be set up to make recordings over time. A day is good, but a full week or even longer is likely to be even better, as interesting things often happen at weekends! For instance, according to a survey carried out by British Gas, up to 46% of the electrical energy used by SMEs was consumed outside normal business hours, so paying attention to those out-of-hours costs can yield big dividends. In case you’re wondering how monitoring energy efficiency actually works out in practice, Peter Halloway, Regional Sales Manager at Chauvin Arnoux describes how a recent project at a secondary school in Kent provided some eye-opening findings. “We were working on an energy efficiency project at a typical secondary school and we logged the measurements over an eleven-day period,” remembers Peter. “The period included the half term holidays, a week of term time and a weekend. The logged results revealed some very interesting statistics.” “The total energy consumed in the period came to just over £2,000, which correlated well with the school’s annual electricity bill of around seventy thousand pounds. But even at the weekend, when there was no activity on the premises, there was still a load of around 30 A per phase. Also, there was a phase imbalance that was producing an excessive current flow in the neutral.” Another important finding from the investigation was that harmonics were unexpectedly high, which is actually a common problem given the proliferation of non-linear loads in our fast-moving technological world. In this case, the data showed that the third- and fifth-order harmonics were dominant. Third-order harmonics are typically caused by personal computers, office equipment and electronic lighting, while in this installation the fifth-order harmonics were probably being caused by servers and UPS systems. “Having analysed the data we had recorded over the eleven-day period, we were able to recommend a solution that would balance the loads and explain how to reduce the harmonics by fitting filters,” Peter added. “An even simpler solution however would have been to educate staff to turn off lighting and equipment at the end of the day or even install systems to turn it off automatically. Relatively small changes like this will deliver big benefits over the years, giving organisations a golden opportunity to enhance their green credentials whilst simultaneously saving thousands of pounds. In short, a PEL is the right choice for kick-starting any organisation’s decarbonisation programme – and it’s a modest investment with the potential for delivering very big benefits!”

We have a new product assistance app!

At Chauvin Arnoux, we are simply passionate about test and measurement. And we like to do things differently by always putting our users’ needs at the core of our product developments. With this in mind, we’ve released an app that helps our customers to get the very best from their portable energy loggers (PELs) and power quality analyser (PQA) by providing them with comprehensive information and guidance whenever they need it and wherever they are. The app is available free of charge in iOS and Android versions. The app is an invaluable aid for anyone who needs to quickly refresh their knowledge of our instruments and their applications. It links directly to the main CA UK website and to CAUK.TV, giving users immediate access to how-to videos and other key product information. All items, including the videos, can be downloaded to the user’s device so that they remain accessible even in locations where there is no Internet access, which is often the case when working deep within the heart of an installation. The “how to” videos featured by the new app show how to set-up, connect and operate our PELs and power quality analysers, and how to retrieve results from them. The first videos cover the PEL103 and the CA8336 Qualistar+, two of our most popular instruments. Information and videos for other products will be added in the near future. The technical articles discuss a plethora of power quality and energy efficiency topics to help with understanding and resolving many of the issues commonly found in industrial and commercial installations. The app also provides options for giving feedback, highlighting application or other issues, and for submitting product queries, making it easier for customers to get in touch with us. That being said, we’d love to hear from you! Please download the app and tell us what you think: 

Monitor three circuits for the price of one!

If you’ve got a PEL103 portable energy logger, you already know how useful and convenient it is for monitoring individual single- and three-phase circuits. But sometimes you want to monitor more than one circuit. If you’re a landlord, for example, you might want to monitor the circuits supplying two or three different tenants, and if you’re a facilities manager, you might want separate results for your lighting, power and HVAC circuits. You could monitor the circuits one after the other, but it’s often useful to know that the measurements on the individual circuits were all made at the same time. Fortunately, if it’s single-phase circuits you’re monitoring, your PEL103 offers a very convenient solution that won’t cost you a penny! Simply set up your PEL103 to make three-phase, four-wire (star) measurements, and you can use it to monitor three separate single-phase circuits simultaneously. Just install the current sensors and make the voltage connections to the circuits you want to monitor, and you can carry out the measurement and log the data in exactly the same way you normally would. The only extra thing you’ll need to remember is to make a note of which circuit corresponds with each of the sets of results. But what if you want to monitor multiple three-phase circuits, or more than three single-phase circuits? Sorry, there isn’t a cost-free fix for this: we’re good but we’re not quite that good! You’ll need to buy additional PEL103s – but do get in touch and we’ll give you an excellent price!

Why monitor the voltage?

Do you want to make your life easier when you’re carrying out energy surveys on your electrical systems? If so, here’s a suggestion you might not be expecting – don’t bother to monitor the voltage! That may seem an odd idea, but think about it for a moment. When you carry out energy surveys, what you’re really interested in is where energy is being used and how usage varies over time, rather than coming up with precise values for the energy usage. So, for energy survey purposes, making the assumption that your supply voltage is constant – which will not be far from the truth – is not going to affect the validity of your results. After all, it’s the current that goes up and down as equipment operates, the voltage is almost unaffected unless the load is enormous. But why would you decide not to monitor the voltage, since portable energy loggers (PELs) like our popular PEL103 always make provision for measuring both current and voltage? The answer comes down to convenience. Arranging to measure current is easy – you simply wrap the Rogowski coils that are used to sense current around the conductors and the job is done. There’s no need to make connections to live parts. Arranging to measure voltage is almost as easy, especially when magnetic probes that can be stuck to MCB screw heads or other convenient connection points are used. But there is a proviso – to measure voltage, you will either need to make connections to live parts or switch off the equipment while you’re making the connections. This is certainly not a deal breaker, but it can be real a nuisance, especially if you will be using your PEL to monitor energy usage at a lot of different locations. In almost all cases, measuring just the current will tell you everything you need to know for energy survey purposes. You’ll even be able to compare before and after current consumption to assess the effectiveness of energy saving measures you’ve put in place. And if you really do want to know about power rather than just current, you can easily export the current measurements recorded by your PEL to an Excel spreadsheet and multiply them all by your nominal supply voltage. But let’s be honest; there are times where you will definitely want to measure both voltage and current with your PEL, such as when you need to accurately determine the amount of energy used by a piece of equipment. However, for simple energy surveys, you can save yourself a useful amount of time and trouble by measuring just the current and letting the voltage look after itself! If you’d like to learn more about energy efficiency, then register for one of our regional seminars! 

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