Advantech Corporation: Energy Data Concentrators Enable Remote Monitoring of Meters

The BEMG-4221 and 4222  media gateways are designed for collecting  energy usage data from electricity, gas, water meters in such environments and applications as  industrial sites, facility energy management systems, and power energy management systems. The company increased the number of I/O ports and installed a low power Intel Atom  N450/D510 1.67GHz processor to their BEMG-4221 and 4222 media gateways, thereby allowing the data to be monitored remotely using Advantech WebAccess software. Both can be connected to many different devices without the need to buy additional modules. IO functionality is provided by four serial ports, two enhanced GbE LAN ports, six USB ports and an audio port. The BEMG-4222 includes an extra four serial ports and eight RS-485 COM ports. Both are IP40 certified and will work in temperatures as low as -10°C and as high as 70°C, and collect data from meters located 64 meters to 128 meters away. BEMG devices are bundled with WebAccess to leverage existing Modbus and BACnet devices without any changes, thereby reducing the cost and complexity of connection. The software acquires, displays, monitors and stores real-time data and allows an individual to change set-points, equipment status, and other parameters in the end-device. In the event of a LAN failure, the BEMG can store the data from the power modules for up to a week. Once the connection is restored the saved data is automatically sent to WebAccess.