Power Monitoring Overview

VID (Virtual Instrument Desktop) is an industrial strength control and monitoring system and is used in conjunction with NetCommander monitoring hardware. For power monitoring we use clamp on current transformers (see left) which require no direct electrical connection to the monitored circuit, these do not need to be installed by a qualified electrician. The current transformer provides a DC output of 0 to 5Volts which represents the RMS current flowing in the monitored circuit. The Netcommander measures this voltage and communicates the values to VID over the LAN or even World Wide Web ... hence the VID software can be geographically separated from the monitored plant, or collect data from several sites, and The system provides a real time graphical display of power consumption, whilst maintaining historical data for later analysis. The software has been tested using windows 98/ME/2000/XP and Vista, the system will work identically, however, the windows may be rendered slightly differently to those illustrated.

Installing VID

Double click on the file Setup.exe which can be found on the Installation CD (this should auto-start)
You will almost certainly want all the default settings, keep clicking "Next" and finally "Install" to install VID on your computer.

Un-Installing VID

Instruments

The instruments available are 270, 180 and 120 degree meters, horizontal and vertical meters, horizontal and vertical bar indicators, a representation of various tanks with varying liquid levels, thermometer, a numeric value indicator and a graph plotter. many power monitoring scenarios are covered in the supplied configurations, these may be used, as is, or modified to suite your application. Instrument characteristics may be changed from the (right click) properties selection panel (left).

Graph Plotter

The Graph Plotter has extra configuration options concerning data logging. By specifying a "log file" for the instrument, chart data is logged to a disk file. There are 60 plotted points to a graph division, so if an hour per division is specified each point represents one minute and an entry is logged every minute. The log scale can be specified from one day per division down to five minutes. Right clicking on a graph brings up the usual properties selection panel with the addition of "logger tool " this produces an historical log analyses tool, this will open with the log file analyses tool, this will allow comparison of historical and current logs to monitor power usage changes over time.

Log Analyses Tool

his form allows the configuration and display of a historical chart of instrument data over time. The start time of the chart can be adjusted with the slider. The graph window is re-sizeable, and multiple graphs can be on-screen at once. An instrument chart can be accessed from the right click instrument properties menu. Two log files can be compared, for example two logs from different weeks, only one channel of the (up to eight channels) in the log files can be compared at once, selected by "Cmp Ch.", "Fill Ch." specifies which channel is made into a solid colour (channel 2, yellow, is selected above), you can also use the "fill Ch." to remind yourself which channel colour is associated with which channel. The dates on the X axis represent the dates for "Log File", the comparison log file data will be synchronized to the same time, but typically a different date. When comparing Weekly logs as above the comparison data will be aligned to the same day of the week, and in the case of Monthly logs, the same day of the Month. Comparing files with no log cycling is fairly meaningless, but will be aligned by time of day. information about a particular plot can be had by left clicking on the chart and a hint box will pop-up as shown above. The X-Axis time resolution can be changed, if the time period is longer than the recorder time period data will be averaged between plots, where the specified time resolution is shorter, the data will be interpolated between plots. the chart can be dragged to the left or right to change the time period (sufficient data permitting) use the down arrows to access the ca lender for dates, highlight the hours/minutes and use the up and down arrows or directly edit the time. "Excel Chart" and "Excel Log" allow the export of .csv Microsoft Excel spreadsheet data for the chart or the entire log respectively. Note the Chart Plot Information box, this pops up when clicking on any chart whether live or recorded and displays the values and any annotations at the cursor position (highlighted vertical yellow line). The log files must be of .clg file extension or a zipped log file in which case the ".clg" is replaced by ".zip", by their nature log files contain many repeated elements and are so eminently compressible! The "Zip?" buttons allow a outdated log to be converted to compressed zip format, you cannot zip an "in date"active log file.
The "Histogram" checkbox, when checked, causes the chart to be displayed as a histogram, averaging the values over each division as in the clip (right), (hint) set 1 hour per div, then the Histogram bar heights will be "units"/Hour. The chart total "units"/Hour is also displayed top left, this only has a meaning for charts showing consumption rates ir power, gas flow etc. The "Tariffs" button, invokes the Tariff Tool

Cancel

Log Tariff Analyses Tool

This tool is for comparing actual utility usage, electricity, water, gas, or any other metered resource, against different suppliers' tariff structures, you can save files describing your own, and alternative suppliers, tariffs. All the data entered into the "Tariff Bands" panel will be saved on clicking "Save Tariff" allowing you to create new tariff files or modify existing ones. The tool will calculate the cost for the selected Tariff structure or can search through all tariffs (.trf files) in the folder specified to find the cheapest supplier for your particular usage pattern. The span of the data to process is initially taken from the underlying chart, you can select different start/end times by clicking on the chart at the appropriate position. The Start/End time selection boxes will be loaded from the chart cursor position with alternate clicks or use the "set start time" check box to specify which to update, alternatively. Remember you can get more data on the chart by reducing the X-Axis resolution. Some tariff files are provided with the VID installation, but these may well be out of date or not appropriate for your application, you should maintain your tariff files from the information on your utility bills.

Power Monitoring Scripts