The solution describes a real project of our partner NEKTA to automate energy accounting in a shopping and entertainment center.
The reasons for the emergence of this project were the high financial costs of maintaining the mall, the lack of a unified automated system for the collection and accounting of energy resources (water and electricity), uncontrolled and irrational use of energy resources, the influence of the human factor in data transmission, additional costs for manual labor, lack of control over the payment of resources, the absence of a mechanism for influencing debtors.

Main tasks of the project:
• automation of collection and accounting of energy resources;
• reducing the cost of 'manual labor';
• providing tenants with reliable information on resource costs online;
• reduced operating costs.

The project was implemented as follows. To control the water flow BETAR SHVE/SGVE-15/2, wireless water meters operating under the LoRaWAN^® protocol were used. These meters can detect pipeline leaks and breaks, stop by a magnet, and immediately send alarm notifications to the metering system, this is very important for the shopping center, as it helps to detect a pipe break at an early stage, a loosely closed tap and external influence on the operation of the meter.
To account for electricity, counters CE2726А and CE2727А manufactured by SPb-ZIP with a built-in shutdown relay and a LoRaWAN^® modem were used. They control how much electricity tenants consume, ventilation, cooling, and lighting systems. If necessary, it is possible to turn on the power limiting relay, thereby limiting the supply of electricity to the debtor.

To control leakage in the basement, several DP-2 sensors are installed around the perimeter. It is necessary to respond in a timely manner to possible flooding of the basement and promptly turn on the pumps, because the products of renters can be stored there. Reading data from electricity meters and heat meters that do not have a LoRaWAN^® radio channel, but have an RS-485 digital output, is carried out using the RS-485 <-> LoRaWAN^® converter Vega SI-13-485.
The automated system consists of several components - wireless electricity meters (single and three-phase), wireless water meters, input meters that transmit readings through a converter (Vega SI-13-485), a gateway and the NEKTA software package. All data is sent to the gateway, which transmits the information to the database via a local network or the Internet.
The project uses the NEKTA Server solution, which has the same rich functionality as the cloud version of NEKTA Cloud but is located on the customer's servers.
Thanks to the built-in Networkserver, energy companies were able to organize their own LoRaWAN^® network within the shopping center.

The results:
• The mall received a reliable system for automated collection and accounting of energy resources, which works with various metering devices.
• The system works in real time and allows you to control all energy resources not only from a personal computer or laptop, but also from a phone, from anywhere in the world (which was important for the customer). Automatic reporting eliminated 'manual' labor, and integration with 1C simplified billing. Emergency notifications are configured, which are sent to responsible persons by e-mail or in the form of push notifications.
• Completeness of data collection from installed meters is 100%. Reading is configured in such a way that the data enters the system daily. When uploading readings during the reporting period, the accounting department has complete information on consumer consumption in a single time slice.
• The accountant uploads data to 1C and issues invoices to consumers, considering the consumption of resources.
• 'Smart' devices allow you to track dozens of parameters, which provides maximum information for analysis.
• Thanks to the system, the primary tasks of the customer were solved: it became possible to distribute energy costs by groups of stores (food, manufactured goods, etc.), and the consumption of individual engineering facilities was considered. In the future, analytical data will be used to develop and implement various energy efficient systems and equipment, which will reduce energy costs.
• There is a possibility of influencing non-payers, the landlord can turn off the electricity from the Personal Account.
• The power engineer of the company generates monthly resource consumption reports for power supply companies.

Full description of the solution and actual realization by our partners under the link .