How DATOMS helped Client to reduce their Operational Expense by Using Diesel Generator Monitoring System.
Problem Definition
Diesel Generator (DG) set is an essential item found in Industrial building, commercial complexes and residential apartment, used as backup power source to provide continuous power supply. In maximum cases the DG set turns on when the power back up is needed and there is no constant monitoring of the performance of the DG. Without real-time monitoring and maintenance of the generator deployed in the field can be a time consuming and costly affair.
The client is a reputed supplier of Mahindra & Cummins DG set for sale and maintenances of other diesel generators across PAN India. The client presented us the challenge such as:-
- No proper track when the fuel gets filled? How much fuel get filled? Is there any fuel pilferage? Is there any fuel got theft during operation? How much time it will run in the available fuel?
- When DG get shut in abrupt manner, they need to send the service engineer to check what exactly the issue due to which it got shutdown and it’s a very time-consuming process.
- All the activities such as ON/OFF, fuel fill, run hour are being maintained in a log book and whenever they need to have a go through those data it’s very difficult for them to analyses.
- Unable to keep a record of the maintenance schedule of the DG such as when the previous genset service had been scheduled and when the next due date is.
- Due to all these manual dependence, time consuming processes and operational distress they had to suffer massive revenue losses.
Our Approach:
The proposal was to go for an IoT based monitoring system that receives all the critical parameters from the DGs sensors/controllers through a gateway device on real-time basis and upstream this to a cloud platform. This data is then visually presented in a dashboard to the operator in a meaningful manner, which can be triggered into action for a schedule maintenance and predict any impending failures.
DG Monitoring solution provides end to end solution in a quick and efficient way that can provide remote monitoring and management of the generators. The Parameters were given to be monitored from the DG includes Load, Running hours, Fuel usage, Coolant level, Engine parameters, and Battery status.
Gateway Device:
The TraDe Gateway device is used for data acquisition of various values & parameters from the DG set and transmit these values in real-time basis to our cloud platform (DATOMS) in an encrypted format. The core functionality of the Gateway device is connectivity, hardware interface and middleware component for the IoT/Cloud Platform.
Datoms Platform:
The Datoms IoT platform will visualize all these parameters such as fuel volume, engine run state, engine run hours, fuel consumption rate, coolant level, energy etc. on a real-time basis. These readings provide a complete picture of what is happening inside the DG and helps customer/client to have a comprehensive analysis of the situation and thus take desired preventive actions. Predictive Maintenance the most useful aspect of the platform helps to improve the performance of the generator significantly by pre-predicting any anomalies and thus reduces the maintenance cost of the client by avoiding a sudden breakdown.
Features:
- Field Generator Management: Helps to analyse the real-time data of each and every generators.
- Reports Management: Generate reports for a specific date range, helps in monitoring progress for better decision making.
- User Management: Helps assign DGs to proper service person to provide better service.
- Alert Management: Helps to create own alerts settings and gain alerts whenever there’s a threshold violation.
- Service Management: Drive efficiency by creating a seamless link between field service operation and customer engagement.
Clients Feedback:
- Visible reduction on fuel bills by regular tracking of fuel usage and consumption.
- Operational Expense reduced by almost 25%.
- Increased in transparency by automating the entire system and reducing the dependence of manual work.
- Easily able to maintain and manage the service schedule for better on field operations.
