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A report published by IBM® in cooperation with Rational Network.
The IBM Informix Time Series solution helps company track usage trends and analyze data over time.
In 2006, Reinout Bertels, Safety, Health and Environmental manager for Coldset Printing Partners, a joint venture of print media groups Corelio Printing and Concentra, met with other media companies in Belgium as part of a national effort to reduce corporate energy consumption. However, as each company provided data regarding its energy usage for printing newspapers, books and magazines, Bertels saw a surprising trend.
As the Energy Savers team began investigating how to obtain this data, it was introduced to Energcon, which offers energy monitoring and reporting systems to help companies track power, gas, water, heat and carbon output. “We founded Energcon because we saw there was a need to provide customers with a visible view on energy consumption and use,” explains Gerrit Leskens, Energcon’s CEO.
Energcon’s offering—which integrates an easy-to-use web application with an energy logging system from Rational Network and IBM® Informix® database software—helps Coldset Printing Partners track energy consumption for each of its printing presses and view energy trends over time so staff can identify if any process or system is drawing more energy than necessary.
The logging system is placed on each transformer in the company’s printing facility and captures energy consumption for each press every 15 minutes. The data is then sent over existing power lines via GPRS modem and stored in an IBM Informix database. From there, Bertels can log into Energcon’s web application to quickly view power consumption for each printing press at any given point in time.
“I can look at power peaks, consumption per meter, and accumulated consumption,” says Bertels. “Whatever I want to see I can see and I can choose my timeframe. It’s very user-friendly for a nontechnical guy like me and it’s so easy to use that you don’t hesitate to just log in to look. It has become part of my daily routine to check our power usage.”
Managing time-series data
One of the challenges in tracking energy trends over time is the ability to analyze time-series data—any set of data that is accessed in sequence by time and can be processed and analyzed in a chronological order.
“There is both a performance and storage challenge with traditional relational databases,” explains Throstur Jonsson, co-CEO of Rational Network. “What happens in most cases is that when you start collecting data in a conventional relational database, it’s very fast for the first few days or first few months. But after that, the performance goes down almost exponentially as the amount of data increases. So when you are doing calculations, for example, manipulating a time series, adding one time series to another or migrating the time series of different sampling scales, it gets very heavy on a conventional relational database.”
As Rational Network reviewed database software for its logging and powerline communication system, it found IBM Informix provided the scalability and performance required to meet client needs. “We are using Informix to make innovative technology of the future available today,” says Jonsson. “We started to study the Informix TimeSeries feature and found that performance was independent of the amount of data stored there. It didn’t matter how much data we pushed into the Informix TimeSeries module, the performance was always the same. I have never seen anything else where no matter how complex those queries are, data is available instantly. Additionally, because the time series engine is integrated into the database, we can monitor data using standard SQL queries. It would take us five to ten times more effort to migrate time-series data into applications without this integrated approach.”
Energcon currently uses the Rational Network logging system to monitor energy usage for dozens of companies across more than 1,000 buildings, logging and storing data from more than 3,000 meters throughout each day.
“The amount of data we’ve accumulated for clients over the years is astounding,“ adds Guido Heremans, co-CEO of Rational Network. “We call Informix the data shark, because we’re never concerned how much space there is. Informix can easily handle it.”
During initial development of its logging system, Rational Network compared IBM Informix to other database and time-series products in the market and found that Informix also provided the reliability, extendibility and stability required. “The Informix database always works,” says Jonsson. “It always delivers what it’s expected to deliver and that helps us deliver new solutions to market faster and less expensively.”
Reducing energy consumption by 10 percent
For Coldset Printing Partners, the solution provided the insight company staff needed to reduce energy consumption in its printing operations by €30,000 (US$42,000) annually. Based on its findings, the Energy Savers team adjusted operations for increased energy efficiency. This included installing automatic systems to shut down lighting when it was not needed and replacing existing air compressor systems with more energy efficient technology.
“I can see very clearly where my baseload comes from and can make decisions that help us save money,” says Bertels. “Comparing energy usage for the same time period in 2010 and 2011 showed that we brought our consumption down by more than 10 percent.”
Additionally, the company can now assess power requirements to increase production when needed. “I can see where my peaks are and how high they are,” says Bertels. “So if we have to make further decisions on power needed for adding presses, then it’s easy to find out what extra power will be required.”
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