Flexible GPS/GPRS Based System For Parameters Monitoring in The District Heating System
Flexible GPS/GPRS Based System For Parameters Monitoring in The District Heating System
Flexible GPS/GPRS Based System For Parameters Monitoring in The District Heating System
Abstract:
Energy consumption for heating purposes accounts for a significant part of the bud-
gets of individual and collective users. This increases the importance of issues related
to the monitoring of heating energy flows, analysis of flow parameters, verification
of fees and, in the first place, minimization of energy consumption. The goal of this
paper is to develop, by employing Global Positioning System receivers, measurement
techniques that are suited to the continuous monitoring of the heating substation pa-
rameters. This paper presents the design and implementation of GPS/GPRS (Global
Positioning System/General Packet Radio Service) system for low power data acqui-
sition using MSP430 Texas Instruments microcontroller for monitoring of the heating
substation parameters. The system is implemented in heating stations for a temper-
ature and pressure monitoring. It contains GPS/GPRS gateway and 8 analog sensor
inputs. Acquisition module and the server base station are suitable for industrial ap-
plications, home applications and for other appliances. The proposed measurement
procedures, which are different from commercially available measurement units, are
based on general-purpose acquisition hardware and processing software, thus guar-
anteeing the possibility of being easily reconfigured and reprogrammed according to
the specific requirements of different possible fields of application and to their future
developments.
Keywords: Distributed measurement systems, GPS/GPRS, computer data acquisi-
tion, low power microcontroller.
1 Introduction
An adequate control of all relevant parameters of the heating process is one of the most
significant means of power consumption optimization. District heating substations, as a link
between hot-water network and internal heating installations in buildings, are used to adapt high-
pressure hot water to temperature and pressure conditions required by space heating systems
of buildings as well as by the systems for the preparation of hot service water in buildings.
To control the energy transfer in the district heating substation, some kind of control system is
needed. The overall efficiency of district heating could clearly be improved by using new strategies
for measurement and control. To maximize energy efficiency in the district heating network it is
essential to have a large temperature drop across the substation between supplies and return pipes
in the distribution network. A larger temperature drop will contribute to more possible customers
in available district heating networks without increasing the production power. An efficient
system will reduce the amount of wasted energy while maintaining comfort, and indirectly reduce
CO2 emissions for heating purposes, which accounts for 30% of the worlds current CO2. Very
rough estimates shows savings of more than 1 million year when increasing the temperature drop
across the substation between by 5 ◦ C in a 760 GWh district heating system. Today, in most
substation control a system focuses on indoor comfort and do not generally consider temperature
Copyright ⃝
c 2006-2013 by CCC Publications
106 A. Peulic, S. Dragicevic, Z. Jovanovic, R. Krneta
drop across the substation, since it is not measured by the control system. The rapid progress in
microprocessor and communication technologies over the last ten years or so has provided great
potential for innovative applications in the field of protection and substation control [1]. There
are a number of applications of different strategies of monitoring and control of district heating
system components: a new control and communication architecture based on WSN and SOA for
district heating substations are developed in [2], [3]. Reference [4] shows the issue of integrating
of intelligent electronic devices (IED) data recording by different IED types and focuses on how
to facilitate the use of the integrated data; The water temperature control of a district heating
substation using soft computing methods, based on fuzzy logic, is presented in [5]. Fuzzy logic
control is implemented and the good performance of the fuzzy control proves that this can be an
alternative to the classic control. The control and monitoring system for the heat distribution
network with a multi-layer structure, which integrates several state-of-the-art technologies and
standards applied in modern industrial automatics, are presented in [6]. The applied control
system and supervisory control algorithms have result in power savings. Reference [7] proposes
an alternative approach to the problem of district heating monitoring parameters selection. The
wireless technology comparing with non-wireless technology has some important benefits, for
example the system cost reduces and easier the installation and maintenance. Some of the most
popular low power wireless sensors networks are ZigBee, Bluetooth, distance between sensors
and the base station is limited to about 1500 m are presented in [8], [9]. This paper presents
GPS/GPRS based wireless acquisition system. The Global Positioning System (GPS), which is a
satellite based system, is the main synchronizing source that is used to provide a time reference
on the communication networks, and its widespread availability makes it possible to obtain,
at each point of the tested system, a clock signal that is synchronized with the one generated
in other remote places. Currently, GPS is the only satellite system with sufficient availability
and accuracy for most distributed monitoring and control applications in distribution systems.
Alternatives will eventually become available, with GALILEO being the most promising at this
time [10].
returns NULL in latitude and longitude fields. This routine repeats until it is established that
the GPS signal is captured. Last good GPS position is saved and used in case that GPS signal is
lost due the impact of various barriers, which is especially important when system is moving. If
the system is not moving then saved GPS position is used. Time is extracted from GPS sentence
in short routine and it is used even though the system is not moving.
that forwards data. It has been develop as a Java Servlet, which call by hardware is using the
HTTP GET request. To the appropriate data Servlet that performs the same processing and
saves them in the MySQL database. The server confirms a successful reception of data and it is
able to send the parameters which correct the way that device work. Since the Servlet can be
accessed with the use of HTTP requests from anywhere in the world, this way of communication
gives this project one global level. There is the ability of usage in different cities, countries and
even continents. The preference listed in the realization of communication in addition to the
great advantages is also a defect that opens a project to the attacks and simulation of some
other persons who would like to emulate values of the passed parameters. As the container,
Apache Tomcat version, 6.0.16 is used. The project is implemented as a Web application, which
is located on the server in Laboratory. It provides current monitoring of more parameters from
one station and displays their values in real time. Since this system has a role in monitoring,
the value of parameters for easier viewing, the marker may be green, yellow or red depending
on the values of parameters, i.e. whether they allow or do not allow critical range, respectively.
In addition to transferring data, hardware has a role that does the processing of data, and as
a parameter sends its status. Processing is not on the server from the simple reason that for
n stations which monitoring m parameters would representing an (m x n) processing every few
seconds. It is very important that every measured value is stored in a MySql database and thanks
to that it could be seen whenever it is needed. This is important because the further analysis
of data is possible in a very easy way. Since a system sends GPS coordinates, GIS support is
used for better data presentation. This is especially important with moving systems. It is also
interesting using GIS presentation when there is more then one system for tracking and their
positions are easy to monitor. As a geographical support in the project, the Google Maps API
is used. It provides great opportunities thanks to the entire globe coverage with satellite and
aero-photo shots of high resolution. The principle of working with Google Maps API is that
a complete GIS system is on Google’s server. The user passes the coordinates and parameters
for the display, to the corresponding server that replies by sending the required graphic content.
Google Maps usage is free of charge and only Google key is needed. The Google supplies the key
and a Gmail account (mail) is required. In order to get the key, it is needed to enter the URL of
the Web server on which Google Maps will be used. Mouse click on the marker surface displays
current parameter values for wanted system (see Fig. 2).
If live monitoring for one system is needed, web application offers functionality (see Fig.
3) where user activity is not needed since AJAX is refreshing a web page after any data value
change. Alarm values are shown with red background color. There is also a possibility for history
observation of measured parameters values with table or chart view.
Flexible GPS/GPRS based System for Parameters Monitoring in the District Heating System
109
Bibliography
[1] P. Bornard, Power system protection and substation control: trends, opportunities and prob-
lems,International Journal of Electrical Power and Energy Systems, 10(2):101-109, 1998.
[2] J. Gustafsson, Distributed Wireless Control Strategies for District Heating Substations, Li-
centiate thesis, Dept. of Comp. Sci. and Elect. Eng., Lulea University of Technology, Lulea,
Sweden, 2009.
[4] M. Kezunovic, T. Popovic, Substation Data Integration for Automated Data Analysis Sys-
tems,IEEE PES General Meeting, pp. 1-6, Tampa, Florida, 2007.
[5] L. Mastacan, I. Olah, C. C. Dosoftei, District Heating Substations Water Temperature Con-
trol Based on Soft Computing Technology,6th Int. Conf. on Electromechanical and Power
Systems, pp. 172-175, Rep.Moldova, 2007.
[6] W. Grega, K. Kolek, Monitoring and Control of Heat Distribution,Int. Carpathian Control
Conf. ICCC, pp.439-444, Malenovice, Czech Republic, 2002.
110 A. Peulic, S. Dragicevic, Z. Jovanovic, R. Krneta
[9] A. Z. Alkar, An internet based wireless home automation system for multifunctional devices,
IEEE Trans. Consumer Electronics, 51(4):1169-1174, 2005.
[10] IEEE Standard for Synchrophasors for Power Systems, IEEE Std. C37.118-2005 (Revision
of IEEE Std. 1344-1995), 2006.
[11] A. Alheraish, Design and implementation of home automation system, IEEE Trans. Con-
sumer Electronics, 50(4):1087- 1092, 2004.