A low-cost, reliable solution to industrial sub-metering

With the current market volatility within the energy system causing unprecedented cost rises globally, it’s never been more vital for businesses to monitor their power consumption. Brainboxes Smart Edge Controller (BB-400) provides an industrial solution for sub-metering the process, efficiently capturing and aggregating power data from across your entire facility.

Restorative dentistry, a key procedure for improving oral health, typically involves repairing or replacing damaged and missing teeth to manage diseases of the oral cavity. Rose Lane Dental Practice in Liverpool, UK provides custom-made teeth, including new sets of dentures that must be molded perfectly to the patients’ mouth. As detailed dental information had to be sent to a site in Germany, then on to another site in Spain to finalize the dentures before being sent back to the dental practice, customers were subject to long wait times to receive their treatment.

To optimize the process and minimize wait times, the practice installed the same machine that the European sites used, allowing them to administer the restorative procedure on-site. As the Practice were eager to expedite the process as much as possible, it became necessary to run the machine overnight. This made it difficult to see how much energy their new machine was consuming, both historically and in real-time, and to analyze related costs.

To resolve this limitation, Brainboxes worked alongside David Evans, a senior research engineer at Liverpool City Region (LCR) Holistic to create a bespoke energy monitoring system for the dental practice. After sourcing equipment locally, David commissioned an electrician to install the energy monitoring system following Brainboxes FAQ. Within the system, Brainboxes BB-400 controller is connected to sub-meters which send an electrical signal to the BB-400 via its IO lines for every thousandth of a kilowatt hour of energy consumed.

Utilizing the BB-400’s integrated open-source software tools (InfluxDB, Node-RED and Grafana), the Practice are able to capture and store the data from the machine. The open-source software allows the user to monitor both historical and live data. Additionally, data visualization makes it easier for dentists to understand the data transformation process.

The energy monitoring system provided Rose Lane Dental Practice with the ability to log into the system to see what their energy consumption is. The system also enabled the dental practice to monitor when the machines are running in real-time and historically how long the machine has run for. In this case, they can see how much the machine is costing them in terms of energy usage and carbon footprint.

Thanks to the smart energy monitoring system, machines are able to run overnight without constant user interaction. Using Grafana, a notification can also be setup on the BB-400 to remotely alert technicians when the energy consumption level suddenly drops from a high to a low level, indicating that the machine has encountered a fault.

The BB-400 Industrial Edge Controller combines Brainboxes proven IO and serial connectivity with a range of network connections, allowing you to process data locally and send accurate data to the application of your choice. With Brainboxes smart energy monitoring system, you can proactively monitor your energy usage to identify potential flaws.

When you can visualize and compare data, it’s easy to see where resources are being spent and meet both your cost-saving and sustainability targets.