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This is a knowledge base post to share a summary on integrating third party, non-Schneider Electric energy, water or gas meters with EcoStruxure Energy Hub using custom models for EcoStruxure Panel Server.
To integrate 3rd party devices with Energy Hub, a custom model for the Panel Server gateway is needed. To create and export custom models for Panel Server, EcoStruxure Power Commission - Web tool is available.
Access the EcoStruxure Power Commission Web (EPC-W) tool here.
Creating a 3rd party Custom Model for Panel Server
Follow the existing EPC-Web Documentation on creating a custom Model/Driver with changes to the following steps below.
New Panel Server Energy Model/Driver Product creation
Energy Hub uses the Product type to assign it an Energy Hub Concept type. When you create a Product Type please make sure the following steps are done.
- Brand: Cannot be left as default “Schneider Electric”
- Product Family: Select the family type matching to the Concept type you want from Appendix A.
- Product Range: can be anything
- Product: can be anything
- Commercial Reference: Must be left blank
New Panel Server Water or Gas Model/Driver Product Creation
When creating a Model/Driver for a Water or Gas meter you need to have more specific values entered into the New Product Fields. When you create a Product Type please make sure the following steps are done.
- Brand: <Cannot be left as default “Schneider Electric”>
- Product Family: I/O Device
- Product Range: Standard_Pulse
- Product: <can be anything>
- Commercial Reference: GENERIC_PULSE_INPUT
After the model/driver has been imported into the Panel server and the device has been added using the 3rd party driver then the last step is to set the device’s commodity in the Panel Server to match WATER or GAS depending on what the device is recording.
Creating Panel Server model/driver for a PLC
To implement this work around the Client/Slave device you are trying to communicate to must be able to handle multiple different UnitIDs communicating with it. In addition, it must allow multiple connections to the device.
Currently you cannot build a single driver that splits up into multiple devices in Energy Hub. This means that if you build a Single PLC driver to import 10 water meters, Energy Hub currently cannot break that PLC into 10 different water meter devices.
The work around is to build a separate driver for each device you want to split off from your PLC. For Example, a PLC that has readings from 5 different water meters would have 5 drivers. One for each water meter you wanted to import into Energy Hub.
Each separate driver would point to different registers on the PLC. (The register mapped to the measurement you want to read for the separated device).
When you are adding devices to the Panel server, you would select each of the separate drivers and the connect it to the PLC using the same IP Address but a different UnitID.
NOTE: Some ModbusTCP devices do not allow separate different UnitIDs to be connected to them. Please check the Device/PLC Documentation to make sure it can handle multiple separate unitIDs. If this is the case you might have to switch to using a SiteServer to handle communicating with those devices as SiteServer allows the setup of the same UnitIDs to talk to a single device.
Map the specific EEH Measurements to the Model/driver that is created.
Energy Hub uses select Measurements in Energy Hub. Refer to Appendix B and Appendix C to see what measurements you need to map and the Name (HMIName-Long) you need to use in the EPC-Webpage Measurement Name Lookup.
FAQ
Q: Does Energy Hub support 3rd party devices?
A: Yes, Energy Hub now officially supports 3rd party devices using a custom model for EcoStruxure Panel Server.
Q: What types of 3rd party devices are supported?
A: As a first step, we will support 3rd party power, energy, water and gas meters. We will only support devices that provide measurements that Energy Hub can view in the standard dashboards with currently available subscriptions.
Q: How do we create custom models for Panel Server?
A: Custom models for EcoStruxure Panel Server can be created by approved users of EcoStruxure Power Commission Web (EPC-W).
Q: Are there any limitations I should be aware of?
A: The same general limitations that exist today with EcoStruxure Panel Server apply to 3rd party devices. For example, multi-circuit meters, data concentrators (e.g. one device with an IP Address but multiple Modbus IDs), are not supported. The Panel Server alarms/events publishing limit also applies in the same way for 3rd party devices as for standard devices – see the cloud gateway load calculator.
Q: Can we get alarms and events from 3rd party devices with a Panel Server Custom Model?
A: No, like other software offers, we are not able to retrieve 3rd party device alarms / events through a standard modbus register table. Energy Hub can generate software threshold alarms based on measurement data we retrieve from the devices.
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