This article is sponsored by Meazon
“The non-intrusive connection capability and the inductive charging capability is well engineered and offers easy installation, management and use.”
--Energy Manager Today Awards judge
Energy efficiency projects suffer from a variety of limiting factors affecting ROI, including: Lack of space in the DB in order to monitor as many loads as possible, mainly due to the large size of available circuit meters; high cost of installation of circuit meters, including installation time and wires; closed and proprietary communication protocols between the circuit meters and metering data aggregation units, sometimes including complicated wiring needs; and a high total cost of ownership that prohibits use and installation of many circuit meters in a building. To solve those problems, Meazon developed its Zi-Clamp self-charging induction meter, which combines the benefits of wireless open ZigBee circuit meters with plug and play convenience, to enable deployment in space- or access-constrained environments, ideal for large scale deployments where cost of installation and provisioning in-cabinet solutions becomes prohibitive.
Zi-Clamp, winner of an Energy Manager Today Product of the Year Award, is a wireless ZigBee enabled current meter used for measuring true RMS AC current on electrical installations. Zi-Clamp’s maximum measurable load is 32 Amperes in 50Hz and 60Hz frequencies with small measurement error (less than 5%). Zi-Clamp is a revolutionary product for the energy management market due to its very easy installation, the company says. It allows a quick deployment of many devices in order to get a speedy audit of a building and characterize the loads without interrupting the power supply. As there is no need to cut power supply, there is no risk of damage on the DB of the building that is a nightmare for the installers, especially in old buildings. Due to its small size, it can fit everywhere and the wireless interface simplifies things further. The energy harvesting from the power line that is measured allows long monitoring periods without the need of maintenance for battery change. Removal of the devices is also quick and simple.
The Zi-Clamp meter includes: wireless circuit metering – absence of cables optimizes installation time and costs; ZigBee networking – the most widely used wireless energy management standard secures openness and interoperability with Meazon’s and other vendor’s data aggregation and energy analytics solutions; split core high accuracy CTs, enabling easy and fast installation; self-charging through induction (energy harvesting)– install and forget, with USB easy back-up charging in case of load absence for a long period; revolutionary small size enabling the installation and measurement of large number of loads in the same DB; low total cost of ownership; and specially designed housing for conveniently optionally placing in the wall.
One judge found the product attractive for several reasons, including the fact that the non-intrusive connections remove liability or equipment interruption issues associated with gathering electricity use data, and that the wireless network and mesh capability enables real-time monitoring, easy collection and aggregation of data and fast and efficient data analysis.
