There is a saying in industry if you can measure it you can manage it and today we're going to look
at a system that does both of those things it's the acti 9 power tag from schneider electric
absolutely
well i thought since we're going to be installing this in our own unit that we work in gary we best
get the grips with the system before taking the plunge with the full install so i've built this
little demo rig so we can look at the essential components and what they do and obviously get
comfortable with the software that's behind them yeah and we're going to fit it in this
board when we relocate it over there inside this unit if you want to check out the review we did
on the actin ix isobar p distribution board by schneider electric i'm sure you'll leave a link
in the description or above down there somewhere yes fantastic looking rig that you've built here
should we take a little closer look at it yeah let's dive in and have a look at the essential
components gary okay so talk me through it well i guess i'll start i'll start with that one okay
we'll come back to that but i'll start with these little devices here right so these are the power
tags themselves right which looks a little bit like a current transformer that you may have seen
in other metering kits right but this actually powers itself by hooking up with a circuit breaker
so that's a that's obviously for a single uh breaker so a single phase breaker yes yeah
where the one we've got here is on the double pole uh breaker here okay and to do three phase one
and we'll do a three there's one that goes in well it's the three phase in neutral because we
have some of those in the board we have behind us okay so that's measuring the power yes yes
that's measuring the power and that communicates wirelessly with this box here which is the acti 9
powertag link right which is then transmitting the data from the from the switchboard and the
power tags back to some software that we've got installed on the laptop here okay so just talk
me through this then so it has to be hardwiring is that correct so it's hardwired to the network
connection right there is another version that does a cloud version but we've got the hardwired
version here but then the interesting bit though is is this wireless communication between the
power tags so if you've got a lot of these in a board there's no interconnecting wiring needed to
get your power data back out to do your measuring and that can be that can be quite complex on
existing metering systems and things like that so i'm thinking this goes obviously inside the
distribution board next to our breaker in this case a double pole one or two-pole breaker and
the rest of this here would be located say in that separate box adjacent to this so we've got
an expansion module that we're going to sit on the top of the of the 89 board when we come to
install it okay so so we've got it all here but it wouldn't all be looking necessary exactly like
this and of course you'll see the one when we put it inside the unit itself won't work yeah
um so that was the that's the power tag bit and but also mention control
obviously you can't control with just a current transform we've got these input and output modules
as well in the rig okay let's have a closer look at those then because i think you can activate
them from here can you yes you can so i mean i could switch the load on and off using this button
here but even this we can configure we'll look at that in a little while so this is an output module
and i've hooked this up to a contactor who catches here and it's also got an auxiliary contactor feed
back into the system so that we know that the contacts have actually closed on that as well
wow it looks yeah it looks remarkably like your work because that's really good and obviously
there's a little bit back here that we'll have a look at as well at some point in the video just
talk me through why um obviously yeah so measuring power you know again across a large facility you
know you want to know where your energy is going and you know before again before you can manage it
you need to measure it so you know where power is going and that's where this 89 power tag comes in
so it links in with maybe having a more efficient process so imagine we're building something and we
change the operation or how we build it you can actually measure the amount of power the changes
have saved you in that process yeah i mean i'll give you a great practical example a few years ago
i was lucky to visit a visit a large heavy plant manufacturing factory up in scotland and they had
installed power monitoring across the whole site because they wanted to work out how much energy
is consumed making each piece of construction equipment okay and when they knew it they could
start to save it yeah and then obviously one of their key metrics across the group was to
reduce the obviously that energy impact as lots of companies need to do at the moment and yeah
obviously getting a grip as where does energy go is important and yeah that so you might bring in
a new piece of equipment and that that reduces energy or you may change your lighting system
obviously you can see the impact of that and track it over time and can you control it as well so say
for instance you know we had a business where maybe like a football stadium where we go into
like a cleaning mode so late in the evening we want to turn off a lot of lights could you do that
through the system yeah so again uh traditional control systems there might be lots of wires
involved or you might want to retrofit this to an existing system this is probably where this power
tag is probably most useful in those retrofit situations or even in new builds as well it can
also hook up to a building management system as well so what we're going to look at today is just
the power management some of the intelligence we can get from the system we're not going to
implement full controls and have lights going up and down that's probably for another another video
you said about the power tank can we see how easy it is to fit when he's powered because our
audience are thinking we're electricians you want to know how difficult it was to fix should we fit
this one here do you want to cut it so let's fit the power tag to this existing circuit breaker
it's very easy to remove the conductors from the circuit so effectively we're now inside the
three-phase distribution ball when we're doing this yeah so obviously we don't see many double
pole circuit breakers in the uk but that's just what we've got here so the power tag itself gets
its power from the circuit it's connected to so there's a little little tabs there for uh for line
and neutral so again push the conductors through the power tag and they're the current transformers
slot them into the cage terminals and then just tighten them back up we could just see those two
tabs going in and it's just a case of torquing them back to the required setting and you're
finished yeah that's it job done well i think that clearly demonstrated how easy it was to
fit the power tag but you said it can measure power so you need to show me how it's going to
measure that output yeah so our demo rig we've got here Gary i've got the heater on the bench here
connected through the contactor controlled via the input output module of the system
and then connected through the power tag that's on the end of this 40 amp circuit breaker there okay
so first off i can switch the heater on using the powertex i'm just going to do that on the screen
so you're going to switch it on from the computer so just bring that in wow like that so just do a
little test button there you hear the contactor click and now we're being warmed and now you'll
start to see the power data coming through on the second line here from the power tag itself so it's
giving us a reading of um obviously the current the voltage uh present and also the the power
um it updates itself every uh around every 30 seconds or so okay so yeah i like that so that's
seemed beyond easy that did you so remotely you've gone on there you've turned on in this
case a socket outlet which is turned on a heater but not only have you turned it on but you've
measured that power output as well yeah so we can see there's really a power factor things like that
yeah the voltage and then you can obviously assign alarms to that as well okay what do
you mean by an alarm i will say the voltage dipped or power wasn't exactly where you'd expect to be
i'll say the breakers trip so what i'll do first i'll actually trip the breaker okay let's bring
in hand cam so we can physically see you doing that so on site the the break is going to trip
and then you'll see that reflected in the software let's have a look so you'll see the power tag go
from green uh to red when it does its next update you said about 30 seconds wow that coming quick
so you can see we've lost voltage you can see there's no power recorded now
so i could be back looking at management systems that you talked about previously
and before i even go to site i know what breaker is tripped i probably know its location okay and
my fault finding process has started already yeah i'll reference say you're in preventative
maintenance and possibly you know sometimes when power suddenly increases or decreases you
know something's going to fail or something's out of where you'd normally expect it to be
as an area to look at yeah when you go outside so i'll restore that breaker now
well i can actually change the power rating of this so i can actually step it up to
say two kilowatt shall we see if that will change on there yeah so let's bring that in and i'm going
to change that now to two kilowatts you say it takes about 30 seconds or less to update
yourself there you go yeah is that updating now it's uh it's gone from being up yes also you see
that power increase i think you see the currents change obviously we see the power now changing
there's a yeah i appreciate not to reflect what's coming out the heater so that's yeah really
simple so you know from my point of view it could be you know that we can actually see
maybe someone's turned on all our air conditioning someone's left all the lights on at night when the
building's unoccupied and it won't take much of a story in the back there to work out where you're
wasting power will it or in other words spending money i would suggest yeah that's it and then
obviously some of the clever things we can do in the setup um so obviously we configured this for
a heating load turn that off for a second nice and warm yeah well okay we can also alter the
devices themselves so we're just going to this uh you know the setup screen okay when you say
alter the devices what do you mean by that okay so we've got uh if you look at our control relay
there yeah so there's some parameters you can set on there now the relay itself if you look
at it here just bring the hand cam in bring the hand coming you'll see we've got a manual you
can actually trigger it manually from this button on the front so in other words i'm on site and i
want the actual outgoing load to come on i just go and simply go to the area near the consumer unit
distribution board etc and press the button yes now that might be desirable in some applications
right okay but obviously if you've got someone who gets a little bit trigger-happy and pushing things
that they shouldn't you can actually disable that function or enable it so i'm just going
on this screen here so you're gonna disable it because it is enabled yes so you can see the uh
local control so local control enabled there just go in and alter that to no
okay right to the device confirm that confirm that so obviously we've done that obviously away from
the area and you're going to tell me next when you press that button okay when we press this button
down here that it isn't going to do anything yeah that will be disabled so that's probably
the air conditioning for the people working for you you've turned off on a nice hot day
yeah the classic one is the heating people trying to override the heating system you know we think
it's warm enough you think it's cold so you'll try and bypass the control system yeah i know exactly
where you're going so is that updated let's have a look at pressing that button then all right so now
if you push that well i think so now that button normally i'm now cold yeah you're nice and cold
well thank you for that it shows how clever it is isn't it yeah so perhaps now i'll change it
we'll change to a lighting load plug in the flood light we've got behind us i'm going to change it
on the screen okay so so this means now then we've got a dimmable lighting circuit that we've got a
dimmer on so we can dim our circuit and you think that will see us change the power consumption and
also the power factor of that yeah so let's uh i'll just change it to a lighting load so you
might want obviously you'd group these in your switchboard and that's only only for enabling the
identification of your load that doesn't make any difference about change out we could have left it
as heat and it still would have worked wouldn't it you just want to identify it correctly yeah
exactly yeah so let's do that so that one will update and then we'll go back to that
screen and we can now look at the actual power consumption of this lighting circuit yes yeah
that would quickly updated what are we on to next
so again i could obviously update our breaker as well let's just go back to our device checkup
so again i can still remotely trigger the light so i can switch off and again it gives us the
status on the screen there as well if you look at the contactor so launch one off okay
because you triggered it from there okay and you're in full control out in the back office
okay and so you can can you put it back on again for us yeah bring it back on
real terms that's in almost instant isn't it yeah so what we're gonna do now we're gonna
dim our lighting circuit down let's wait until the power starts showing us the way it should be
on the screen so we can see yeah remember from that last video we made about that floodlight yeah
it's just around a 250 watt led flood light we can see the power factor on the screen there as well
so if i just start to dim it down so if you bring that lighting level down we expect to
see the power full wouldn't we yeah we'll see the powerful and uh yeah power factor normally on led
products is quartered at the full power so you can see the power factor start to change as well
so again just carry on dimming that downwards bottom end
yeah there it is that's down at 44 watts and you can see the power factors change there as well
yeah i mean it just seems too easy that wasn't very difficult what you did here in the first
part of it obviously with commission we're going to show that footage as well but in real terms
those results are almost instant aren't they of what you're doing within your installation
and looking at the power you're measuring yeah and yeah i mean yeah i say again well
let's have a look at how easy that actually was to set up as well because remember in a normal
control system or if you're using metering there'll be a lot of interconnecting wires
you know interlocks things like that time clocks all sorts of other things in there
this wireless system is fantastic so i'm just going to commission our little demo rig that
we've got here so find our acti 9 power tag link going to connect to the device
and then we're going to add some wireless devices to it so we're going to add that
wirelessly you can also do it by a qr code and scan them in or just input the details from the
tag at the side of the device but this is going to quickly scan oh there you go i found them
yeah so it's found out two devices just a small installation here
you can use this for up to 20 devices on a wireless scan i'm going to name them now
just yeah until yeah it's on an mcb i'm just going to call this an output device for now
and then let's just have a look at some of the other parameters in there
so it just wants to want to know what mcb rating we're attached to so this is on a 40 amp mcb
and it's going to connect to a heating load we'll set it as for now okay makes sense and then we've
just got to send that information to the device i'll just click on the button here so it's
sending the information because it's on the same network is that right yep it's connected to it
so it's just updating the device so it knows what it is and then repeat the
procedure for that control device as well so a few parameters you can set here so again we'll just
you can obviously assign it to what type of load it's controlling so it makes obviously easier to
decipher if you're ever doing any fault finding or other commissioning
just got a process for now you can set it as a contact or an impulse relay
if you're going to trigger something else again so just right to the device
quickly do that and that's it that's our system commissioned so just for a change i let gordon do
the commissioning i know how i love to do the back office stuff and again you showed it was
simple wasn't it well thanks for that gary i know you love software-based systems but no that was
easy to set up and yeah this is our first look at this power tag system from schneider electric i'm
sure there's efix viewers out there ahead of us in terms of deploying it and have got loads of
experience with the system if that's you drop a comment below if you've got any questions about
the system fire them to us we'll try and answer them or pass them on to somebody who does know
the answer but even better if you're one of the users who is using the system you try and answer
the question for some of the other efix viewers in there we really value that input and so do they