To help our client acquire power consumption data on the motors, ICP DAS utilized the three-phase smart power meters (PM-3133-360P), together with the IIoT power meter concentrator (PMC-5231) to acquire the motors’ electric data. Later on, the electricity information could be saved and transmitted to the back-end SCADA system through Modbus TCP protocol. With help from the SCADA system’s electricity data integration, users can quickly decide their ideal predictive maintenance scheduling.

The oil milling machine structure can be easily understood: a storage hopper, and the main part of the machine (the oil pressing screw, and the motor). In the palm oil manufacturing process, operators have to manually monitor the palm kernel seeds dropping from the storage hopper into the palm oil milling machine. When the machine is overfed with the palm kernel seeds, the processing speed of the screw slow down due to the adhesive material stuck on the screw. In the meanwhile, the power consumption will increase sharply due to a ponderous motor rotation. Therefore, operators need to use a rod to spread the palm kernel seeds evenly at the feeding place. However, these situations will increase the possibility of equipment shutdown, higher maintenance costs, and other potential issues. Furthermore, working in a heated environment is quite challenging, and employees’ safety and work efficiency are also vital concerns that should be considered. For example, manual supervision is prone to fatigue; product quality cannot be balanced; occupational accidents are prone to occur. Therefore, their business leader faced many worries and challenges that time. ICP DAS Monitoring Solution for the Power and Equipment Condition ● Hardware Diagram As shown in the overall diagram (Figure 1), the ICP DAS three-phase smart meter (the PM-3133-360P) enables our users to obtain reliable and accurate energy consumption readings from the oil expellers. Therefore, we connected the three-phase smart meters with the voltage and current sensing wire of several on-site motors to collect the motor’s power consumption data. Besides, the smart meters are connected to a power meter concentrator (the PMC-5231) through the Modbus RTU protocol. The PMC-5231 then stores and logically calculates the collected power information and sends it to the SCADA system through the Modbus TCP protocol. Figure 1: System diagram of oil milling equipment ● Predictive Maintenance (PdM) Our energy monitoring applications enable our client to judge the material feeding by different current loads shown in the software interface (Figure 2). It makes the power consumption data much more comfortable to be understood, which are not operating, medium load condition, and high load condition. If an operator notices that a specific oil milling machine is being frequently operated or the SCADA system continuously shows high load status, the leader can be informed in advance. By doing so, the client could have the machine maintained beforehand. Features and Benefits of ICP DAS Products Increasing Production Capacity: the palm oil production capacity has risen by 28% a year in utilizing the ICP DAS smart power meters. Data Visualization: In the past, our client’s palm kernel oil milling machine was manually monitored. However, ICP DAS has successfully helped them present the power data in a visualized way, which is more specific and convenient. Avoid Mechanical Failure with IIoT: The data visualization can lower down the chance of misjudgments, and users can effectively arrange the maintenance schedule based on the current status. In this way, they could not only avoid excessive costs spending on maintenance but avoid mechanical failure. Alarm Notification: PMC-5231 power meter concentrator has a built-in IF-THEN-ELSE logic rule execution and alarm notification function via LINE/Email (Optional). It means that when the machine is not running correctly (shutdown or not operating), our PMC-5231 will issue an alarm. In other words, a company supervisor will know the machine status immediately via the notification system. Real-time & Historical Power Data: the PMC-5231, IIoT Power Meter Concentrator, provides timely records and historical information for our client. The administrators can monitor the status of power consumption of each device and perform statistics and analysis of the power information, thus improving the overall efficiency in electricity consumption to save costs on utility bills. Data Logger Operation: the PMC-5231 supports a data log operation. When the network is disconnected, or the micro SD card is not functioning, the system can still operate normally to ensure the complete return of the power data record file, effectively preventing power data loss due to network disconnection.