Technical Report: Final Draft

1.0           Proposed Solution

Our team proposes that EMA adopt Anacle smart management solution to Singapore’s public hospital. The proposed solution will modify the current traditional implementation of meter reading, where extracting the individual readings of the gas, water and electricity data are collated physically on the premises. Instead, output data from the utility meters are routed to the smart meter. Readings from these utilities can be seen through the capacitive screen from the smart meter. Leveraging on the Internet of things (IoT), the readings from the Tesseract is stored in the system and building owners are able to see this information through the web browser on their computer. (refer to Appendix B and Appendix C)

5.1               Technical specification

The Tesseract has four digital Input/output and four analogue input along with an ethernet and a USB 2.0 port. The output from the gas, water and electrical meters will route to the analogue input of the system.

Tesseract uses the Modbus RTU RS-485 protocol, an IoT protocol compliance for communication. This means that the system is able to support up to 31 nodes across 1200 meters but has to be arranged in a daisy chain (refer to Figure 1). It is compatible with a comprehensive number of communication networks which includes Starlight communicator (refer to Appendix D) which is used in complement with Tesseract. An ethernet port is connected to the router and routed to a secured service provider.

Figure 1.           Arrangement in daisy chain (http://jamod.sourceforge.net/, 2010)

5.2               Existing example of proposed concept implemented

In the United Kingdom(UK), the Moorfields Eye Hospital adopted a smart metering system and has only been reaping benefits since. Harding (2017), director of estates and facilities,  claims that the system has given him the appropriate data he needs through the integration of various systems into one platform. Through this, Harding shares spending lesser man-hours to maintain the system. Thus, overall operating costs to maintain the building have gone down and productivity rises.

5.3               Benefits of proposed solution (numeric the different benefit)

Tesseract would be an asset to the Singapore’s public hospitals as it can increase the productivity of the facility management staff. By having one platform to view the overall building’s energy management, lesser manpower is required. Accuracy is also attained through the periodically recorded information of gas, water and electricity utilized.

5.3.1 Data extraction

Stored information from the smart meter can be assessed by data analysts to view and study patterns. This data extracted will be used in the BMS for better flow in the day to day operations through the building automation programming.

5.3.2 Operating System

Running on the Android operating system, Tesseract is able to install energy management applications. Further developing on these applications makes the smart metering system future proof.

5.4               Limitations of proposed solution

In terms of limitations, a very old system may not be suitable to implement the latest smart metering technology. Should building owners plan to use smart metering systems for existing buildings, they may need to conduct an assessment to determine whether the current system is compatible.

This means that the building owners need to plan an overhaul or upgrade their existing metering systems.