In the hospitality industry Smart Pluggs can be attached to equipment like dishwashers and hot plates. Varanasi illustrates, “Say, Smart Pluggs are attached to five hot plates. The data stored on the network can be used to compare the difference in energy consumed by the various hot plates. If one of them is faulty, you’ll know immediately and can get it repaired or replaced. This is where you make your return on investment on Smart Pluggs.”
Suvana Solutions has also implemented the use of Smart Plugg in building management system in a skyscraper in Hyderabad. Varanasi comments, “It has been a practice among builders to provide high-power sockets to connect vacuum cleaners at respective car parking areas, for cleaning cars regularly. It’s impractical connecting these plug points to residents’ meters, so the plug point energies are separately monitored using Smart Plugg. Individual consumption details are wirelessly transferred to the building management system for appending to the corresponding resident’s monthly bill.”
What lies ahead
Suvana Solutions is also developing a Smart Plugg solution to monitor modules in solar panels. “Solar plants are being deployed in huge areas and there is a lot of distance between each module. The cables are prone to damage due to rat bites but you do not get an alert immediately about a damage. The Smart Plugg will see a difference in the energy generated and quickly notify the network,” Varanasi claims.
Besides, as mentioned earlier, Suvana Solutions also plans to introduce a low-cost Smart Plugg. The radio-frequency communication is being modified from comprehensive mesh to simple transceiver without losing key features. This will bring down the overall cost by eliminating the charge for proprietary license fee. They also plan to employ alternate low-cost communications for some applications and use fast-moving metering chips. Since the chip-level goes low, power is saved.
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