The Development of a Portable Data Acquisition System for Use in Commercial and Industrial Energy Audits

Abstract

The need for a functionally advanced instrumentation and data analysis system combined with the improvements in electronics technology has led to the design of a flexible and updateable data acquisition system. This system utilizes a distributed processing approach to allow for the real-time gathering and analysis of the types of data required during energy audits and long-term energy use studies. This system uses the traditional transducer-based approach for non-power systems data, but utilizes advanced direct digital sampling and processing for all power systems information. Using this approach, a single system is able to measure both electrical power data (demand, power factor, current, etc.) and non-power systems data (temperature, relative humidity, etc.) with a minimum of transducers and provide the data to evaluation algorithms for as-gathered processing. The software has been designed, using a message-based approach, to allow the end user to build application specific analysis routines that can be added to the system and executed during the data acquisition process. Using library routines developed with the system, the user is able to add end-use specific code that is executed at run time. This capability allows the user to analyze the data in real-time, thus avoiding the storage and post processing of large quantities of data.