Options to remote monitor or control 3 phase equipment?

dollylama

We've a few 3-phase water pumps on our site which are connected to power year round, coming on and off on float switches.

The issue I'm trying to solve is that if the power goes out or surges, the breakers in our electrical room which the pumps are connected to reset and it means we can come in after weekends or holidays to find our sumps flooded.

Having chatted to our electrician, I'm happy that this is the expected behaviour of the breakers so I'm looking for a remote monitoring system that would check if the appliances are receiving power and if not, would send a text or email to one of our team so we could head in and power on the pumps again. Even better would be a system where we could remotely reset the breaker and restore power to the pump but I appreciate there could be a safety concern here.

We have coverage and WiFi / Ethernet at our electrical room so is there any systems in use on the Irish market which could do what I'm asking?

2011

This is is not "the expected behaviour of the breakers".

Breakers should only trip if there in a overcurrent (short circuit or overload). If breakers are tripping for any other reason then you have a fundemental issue that needs to be resolved. Furthermore, breakers should not be reset before the cause of the trip is understood and dealt with.

Power quality meters (connected to UPS) such as this can be used to monitor the status of 3 phase supplies:

https://www.bpxireland.ie/store/product/metsepm5110?gclid=Cj0KCQiA7oyNBhDiARIsADtGRZbSFv6PSF5q-VaWwtd0r9cGez1XIAeB0Bibd0UHw3p5E3fhPCBS__kaAo0zEALw_wcB

These would generally be installed in MCC's.

10-10-20

It would be interesting to hear why this behaviour is happening. Are the pump-breakers configured with an external control to shed the load in the case of a power anomaly?

legin500

You should try the Shelly 3em units. Available from number of companies in Dublin I believe.

https://shelly.cloud/products/shelly-3em-smart-home-automation-energy-meter/

dollylama

Thanks for the responses guys. I might have used the wrong term when I said a breaker. What we have is illuminated start and stop buttons along the front of our cabinets, each of these tie back to what I've been calling a breaker in the cabinet. When the power goes out or blinks in the area (as it often does), the device in the cabinet "trips" so you have to go back and press start to get it going again. If the pump itself throws a wobbler, the device in the cabinet also trips and illuminates the stop button so we know something has gone wrong.. doesn't happen often thankfully.

I'll get a picture up later

PilotHole

Its a start stop circuit on the pumps for safety reasons.

The latch drops out when the power goes (like a table saw etc).

You could wire a sonoff (a dinrail one with 4 channels ) in parallel with the pumps so you can start them remotely .

That doesn't solve your power monitoring problem though .

2011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118239526#Comment_118239526

What do you mean "when the power drops out" ? How often odes this occur? This should be a rare event, it should only occur when the ESB fails.

As others have pointed out once there is a momentry loss of power for the stop / start circuit this will casue the motor to stop. If the control circuits were UPS backed this issue would not occur (for as long as the UPS lasts). As above, for safety reasons this may not be desirable. Other posters ahve suggested using "Shelly" and "Sonoff" devices, these are both cost effective solutions that can be used to start the motors remotley. However these are what I would describe as suitable for home automation / domestic use only (I have these in my own home). For a 3 phase industrial application I would take it to another level.

dollylama

Almost all circuits in this cabinet are setup as per the images above. We're happy enough with how they trip themselves in an outage as some of the end-machinery wouldn't take kindly to the possibility of power coming in and out during an outage and there's the added peace of mind that we have to manually reset the trip and wait to see if it's the machinery at fault or if it was a supply issue that threw it.

While it doesn't happen all too often, our area does experience supply issues, more so when the nearby factories are churning away. You might not notice anything sitting in your house but we can come in to find our panels reset and you'll often hear that something or other fried itself in one of the factories. It's been accepted for years that the area "doesn't have enough power" and the ESB do liaise with some of the heavier users locally to manage demand. It's being slowly improved but we still get the odd hiccup. Thankfully for us, it's only a case that we come in the odd Monday to find our pumps have been off all weekend. Not the end of the world, we just have a bit of pumping to do to get going again but a notification that there's been an outage or stoppage would help somewhat.

I'll look into some of the devices mentioned above with our electrician and thanks again for the suggestions. As I say, a device that would send a simple text or email alert would suffice but remote control would be neat to have also.

10-10-20

It's a power monitoring and control system which you need, typically these are tied into a BMS (building management system) and will report back the various status on a dashboard. Like 2011 said, I can't imagine household Sonoff/Shelly devices being acceptable in an industrial setting, especially given their requirement for WiFi, etc.

Schneider Electric do this systems; bring somebody else's wallet.

2011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118243464#Comment_118243464

Yes, I provided a link to a Schneider Electric power quality meter above.

As 10-10-20 said this could be connected to the BMS. In larger installations we would generally install a dedicated PMS (Power Monitoring System).

Lucifer

A simple and cheap solution would be to leave everything as it currently is. Get an esp8266. Put a sketch on it to send an email/notification when it powers up and then just does nothing (I would add a 5 min delay first to make sure wifi was back online, power stable etc). Then just power it from a normal plug with a phone charger etc. When power goes the esp8266 will go off. When it boots back up it will then notify you that power is back so you know there has been a power cut. Another option would be to use an arduino with a sim card instead of the wifi.

Would take a bit of learning if you have never messed with these before, but there is a lot of guides online to do this sort of thing. should not cost more than a few euro and does not involve messing with any safety aspect of the original setup.

dollylama

I done a good bit with various control and monitoring systems in a previous career.. Wattics, Danfoss, Endress+Hauser and others the names of which have long since escaped me! I'd be aware of the capabilities of these systems but they would be overkill for my current issue. Added, we have no BMS or PMS and truth be told, we never will as we've basically got a small, standalone power shack running a small portacabin and about 10 3-phase electrical components... 3 of which are small water pumps, the rest motors of various sizes.

At the very simplest, I'm after a device that will watch for voltage on circuit X and if there is none, off goes a text, email or push alert. The Shelly's look good but as mentioned, they might be a bit on the light side for higher amperage gear. I'll take all the above advice on board and bounce it off our electrician and hopefully I can come back and update in the coming weeks