Project challenge: Monitor power & operating conditions 

Our customer deploys coal crushers on mines and had a requirement to monitor power consumption and operating conditions of the twin motors driving the crusher's conveyor belt. Unfortunately due to the remoteness of the site, they are only present once every few weeks. 

As such, a specialised, long-term logging, twin three-phase (ie. 6 phase) power analyser was required, bearing temperature on the motor as well motor speed and vibration analysis for future systems.

Furthermore, due to the use of variable-speed drives, the frequency of the supply was very noisy, so an additional filtered version of the voltage signal was required to measure the effective frequency.

All data had to be stored locally on a flash drive for local analysis and a reduced subset of the data had to be pushed up to a centralised server allowing lists of users to view and download relevant data over the internet. Exceeded limits or alarm conditions  on the systems had to be sent to all parties in a interest group immediately.
NEEDED: AN ELECTRICAL POWER AND MACHINE CONDITIONING SYSTEM WITH REMOTE DATA ARCHIVING AND ALARM FUNCTIONALITY

JAD solution

JAD Systems solution comprised: 
  • A customised National Instruments Compact Rio-based power analyser,  with FPGA-based logic to power-analyse eight channels (2 x 3-phase systems plus one filtered phase for frequency determination). The Compact Rio also measures RTD-based temperatures. 
  • Digital pulses for motor speed. 
  • A custom-designed power measurement board was implemented for ease of installation. 
  • A second signal conditioning board was developed for bringing all the data cables to a neet single point of connectivity. 
  • A PHP/mysql server-based solution was created for the data storage and reporting portal.
  • 3G communication taken care of by industrial 3G modems from Tellit.

For each of the above as well as  electrical phases, RMS voltage, RMS current, active power, apparent power and frequency are logged in CSV format to a 16Gb flash drive for further study.

Vibration analysis of the bearing will be concluded in future enhancements of the JAD Systems solution. 

Customer comment: "During the first month of operation the system had already saved on a warranty claim and the system will be rolled out as a standard feature on all new units."