Due to the increasing costs associated with electric energy consumption major concern has lately been paid to ensure optimal refrigeration technique operation in shopping centers. An integral solution is accomplished by connecting numerous shopping centers into a completed whole controlled by a central system where optimization algorithms are run based on the defined strategies. This thesis defines and evaluates strategies for optimization of electric energy consumption costs of refrigeration technique. The strategies are based on the analysis of electric energy consumption regarding the measurements performed and obtained from existing shopping centers. Comparison between flat rate and time-based pricing is included.
D.10 Educational activities
COBISS.SI-ID: 10871380The demand for energy is increasing every day. In this respect, cooling systems are the greatest energy consumers in shopping centres and as such, they represent a big energy saving potential. With a properly designed central control system aiming to preform measurements and control it would be possible to reduce both unnecessary energy consumption and consumption costs of shopping centres. The purpose of the thesis is to explore the possibilities of improving the planning of cooling technology control in shopping centres and establishing a central control system for management and control through an IP network. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part reviews the current situation regarding cooling technology. The second part outlines the characteristics of IP networks and industrial protocols. Moreover, it lists some examples of good practices of similar solutions and reviews possible open source solutions in order to find the most suitable basis for the control system. The last part demonstrates and upgrades the conceptual design for the central control system architecture. The system would be installed on the central server, which would exchange the data with PLCs via the Internet network. The gateway would serve as a mediator between communication protocols while turning the cooling system on with the TCP/IP gateway. Furthermore, the gateway would enable a two-way communication by using the HTTP protocol with the possibility of controlling, monitoring and displaying both process functioning and history data.
D.10 Educational activities
COBISS.SI-ID: 10469460Due to bigger consumption the prices of electricity are rising, which means that the bigger consumers have large expenses. Therefore, efficient use of it is very important. One of the larger consumers of electrical energy is shopping centres, using the majority of this energy on cooling equipment. Thus optimizing the cooling equipment can save large amounts of money. There are several approaches to optimising it. Our thesis deals with the concept of remote control and the managing of the processes of cooling equipment. The focus is on the consumer part. This system represents one of the approaches to efficient use of energy in cooling equipment. The goal of the investigated approach is the establishment of an external central supervisory system for data processing and with it the management of cooling equipment via an internet (IP) or a mobile network. We investigated the technologies and trends which are based on public communication networks and enable simple data gathering and overview of processes with the use of public data servers. This is nowadays popularly presented as computer science (or service) in a cloud. The thesis has been divided into five sections. In the first section, different approaches to energy management which lead to a more efficient use of electricity are presented. In the second section, there is a more detailed presentation of the architecture of a system for remote data processing, overview and operating of cooling equipment in shopping centres. We dealt with the elements used to construct the architecture as well as with the connection which is needed for the communication of the external management unit and remote stations in an individual network of a shopping centre. This section was used to clarify how data is processed and how this is used for the supervision and control of cooling equipment (i.e. it’s operating) and how the steering systems of the cooling equipment are built. In section three, we determined and described in great detail the individual ways of remote data gathering from devices (sensors), and control of devices (actuators) from the process of cooling equipment through a remote station (router / gateway). The ways differ depending on how data is externally gathered from sensors and on how actuators which are positioned at the lowest levels of the network of a shopping centre (device level) are controlled. We also pointed out the problems and the possible solutions with individual manners, such as connecting devices of various manufacturers and integrating existing automatisation systems into systems of remote control. In section four follow an overview of usability and adequacy of all manners and a conclusion, in which I pointed out the most appropriate manner. The final part was used to define the manner of connecting an external control centre with shopping centres’ networks and external users from a point of view of security. Security is one of the main weaknesses of moving shopping centres internal control centres to a joint main control centre.
D.10 Educational activities
COBISS.SI-ID: 10587476