Golden Rock Workshop (GOC) from Southern Railway has bagged the first prize jointly with North East Railway for best Innovation on Indian Railway. GOC workshop has bagged this award for developing & implementing IoT based Smart Energy Management & Condition Monitoring System for Energy intensive machines and Substation Low Tension (LT) panels.
- Organised Annually by the Efficiency and Research Directorate of Railway Board, the Best Innovation carries a cash award of Rs 1.50 Lakhs.
- From Southern Railway workshops, GOC workshop has participated in the above scheme for the year 2019-20.
- Due to Covid-19, assessment and declaration of results were delayed and the results announced now.
About the Energy management system:
- GOC workshop is an Energy management system (EnMS) & GreenCo (Gold rated) certified workshop.
- This necessitates monitoring of Electrical Energy Consumption upto micro level.
- Around 300 smart Energy meters have been provided in Substation feeders & around 150 Energy intensive machines for Micro level Energy monitoring.
- Since manual collection of data is not paving the way for dynamic control of Energy consumption, it was proposed to install IoT based Smart Energy management system.
- Cost of the IoT based Energy Management System available in open market is exorbitant and the firms were demanding Rs. 25,00,000/-.
- Hence it was decided to develop indigenous Energy Management System using the technical know-how of staff which cost around Rs, 25000/-.
- The system thus developed was collecting data from Energy meters, and uploaded them to cloud & generated consolidated reports for critical analysis of Energy consumption pattern.
- Since the system is fetching energy consumption data every second, it has become a handy tool for Energy planning and Identification of High Consumption Machines, Utilisation Pattern and idle running of machines, thus making identifying and monitoring of energy systems easier.
Condition Monitoring:
- Further, temperature sensors provided in Substation LT feeders are also connected to the IoT based Energy Management System for condition monitoring of feeder termination & temperature readings.
- Thus the data obtained will indicate the Loading pattern, Peak and Off Load Condition of feeders so that Concerned Section In-charges could take corrective action as a predictive maintenance in order to avoid power interruptions & fire hazards
IoT based Energy management & condition monitoring system installed is not only cost effective but has prevented the dependency on supplier also for software updation & inclusion of additional nodes. It can also be installed in on Board Equipment of carriages and Locomotives and also in machineries & plants to assess their healthiness.
Advantages of the Energy Management & Condition Monitoring System includes:
- Elimination of restriction of Number of Meters and length of communication cables has saved huge cash.
- Total Elimination of dependency on suppliers for software and customization since software is in house developed.
- Huge Reduction in cost of project since it was developed and installed at a meager expenditure of Rs.25000/-
- Utilization and Energy consumption pattern can be monitored for each M&P.
- Breakdowns can be prevented.
- Optimum transformer loading can be ensured.
- Using the system as a platform for development of Condition Monitoring System for passenger coaches, batteries, on Board AC and TL Components, critical parameters of M&Ps and water Management etc.
The team involved for the Project Development were Shri T.John Arul Doss, Dy Chief Electrical Engineer, (now Retd), Shri L.Balaji, Senior Section Engineer (Trainee) Electrical/GOC, Shri S.Ganesan, Senior Section Engineer /EMW/GOC, Shri J.Ravikumar, Senior Section Engineer /PH/GOC (Now Retd) , Shri M.P.Karthikeyan and Shri P.Sekar, Technicians.
Source: Southern Railway-Press Release | Image Credit (representational): Southern Railway
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