High Accuracy Energy Monitoring Solutions from Analog Devices

Knowing how much energy electronics consume over long or short time periods can empower us to make smart decisions that help improve equipment utilization, increase system performance and save costs. To be able to draw meaningful conclusions, this information needs to be accurate, reliable, and easy to access. Knowing how much energy has been consumed at any given moment helps determine how best to allocate system resources to increase efficiency. When energy usage changes unexpectedly, this may indicate behavioral changes by the end user or problematic issues that need addressing, like aging equipment. Analog Devices serves this market with a high accuracy monitoring portfolio that includes local and remote energy monitors that measure and report all the necessary parameters to understand energy consumption and system performance.

Products like the LTC2946 wide range energy monitor provide access to all the necessary parameters, from voltage and current to power and energy, to accurately assess and manage board level energy consumption with guaranteed ±1% accuracy. The LTC2946 also has the ability to monitor high or low side power rails as high as 100V. Similarly, Digital Power System Managers like the LTC2975 not only provide details on energy consumption, but also enable power supply adjustments to within ±0.25% accuracy to increase processor performance and efficiency.

For high current applications monitoring up to ±30A, the LTC2947 energy monitor integrates a 300µΩ sense resistor and eliminates the headaches of using external sense resistors to measure high currents, including power dissipation, accuracy, temperature drift and size issues. It also offers high dynamic range due to its low current measurement offset of only 9mA (or 2.7µV). Temperature compensated energy readings are guaranteed to be 1.2% accurate at room temperature or 1.5% accurate over the entire –40°C to 85°C operating temperature range.

Monitoring energy usage across geographically large sites can be simplified using the Dust Networks SmartMesh technology. SmartMesh IP Embedded Wireless Mesh Networks deliver the industry's most reliable and lowest power standards-based wireless sensor network (WSN) communications, enabling energy monitoring sensors to be placed in tough Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) environments. SmartMesh IP products are chips and pre-certified PCB modules complete with wireless mesh networking software and are field proven, with over 50,000 customer networks deployed in 120 countries. With an average power consumption of less than 50μA in heavy usage applications, SmartMesh IP products deliver over 10 year battery life, enabling wireless sensor nodes to be placed anywhere with the lowest ownership cost.