Applying Wireless Sensor Networks in Industrial Plant Energy Management Systems - Part I: A Closed-Loop Scheme

Energy evaluation and planning are important in industry for overall energy savings. Traditionally these functions are realized only for large size motors (over 500 hp) in wired systems formed by communication cables and various types of sensors. However, the installation and maintenance of these cables and sensors are usually much more expensive than the cost of the sensors themselves. The unique characteristics of the wireless sensor networks (WSN) make them the ideal structure for low cost energy evaluation and planning in industrial plants, eliminating the costly wired systems. This paper proposes a closed-loop energy management scheme with a WSN architecture. The importance of the proposed scheme lies in its non-intrusive, intelligent, and low cost nature. As the focus of this paper, the properties and architecture of the WSN in this application are discussed in detail. Finally, the overall system applicability is verified by the experimental results from a prototype system