Categories

Why using categories will ease your day-to-day?

Faster configuration across many sites

• Categories gives you a consistent structure:

                      → Source (Electricity,...)

                             → Category (Consumption,...)

                                    → Subcategory (Lights,...)

…and a default behaviour that works well out of the box.

• ​For large portfolios, you can use the bulk configuration tool.

More meaningful analysis (and less manual work)

• Categories is designed to make your data semantic, for example:
  • HVAC consumption
  • PV generation
  • Storage charge
• So Analytics and Dashboards become portfolio-friendly:
  • Roll up/down in the hierarchy
  • Filter by tags
  • Compare sites consistently

Built for Microgrids and complex electrical setups

If a site has:

• Import/export
• On-site generation 
• Storage 

Categories can compute electricity consumption using an energy balance formula — so you get consistent totals even when “consumption” isn’t directly metered.

No need to configure groups

If you have groups that add-up parts of the consumption you no longer need them. Just categorise each sub-consumption, and configure the category as "from sub-categories". This means:

• faster configuration 
• automatic computation of the total, and detailed view or the parts 

In the future (later delivery), you will also be able to:

• categorise several devices from the same category/subcategory in a single location
• use the option "from partials" to aggregate those partial devices
• visualise total, each partial, and remainder directly in analytics and dashboards, without further configuration

What exactly is Categories?

Categories is the new configuration and analysis model that evolves the older “Reference Devices” approach.

The model: Source → Category → Subcategory

Example structures:

• Electricity → Consumption → HVAC / Lighting / Refrigeration
• Electricity → Import / Export
• Electricity → Generation → PV / Wind / CHP
• Electricity → Storage charge / Storage discharge

Good news: it’s retro-compatible

• Your existing setup keeps working.
• When you modify your configuration, and start using new calculation methods ("from subcategories", or "from energy balance" - see below for details) some legacy features might not be able to perform the calculation. All legacy features will be upgraded or replaced with new ones that do work with any calculation method.

How it works

When you configure a category total, you choose a calculation method.

When performing analysis and reporting, you can retrieve the automatically computed values for each location or portfolio level (filtered by zones, tags, etc..)

Calculation methods

How to get started

Jump to the configuration section, and follow the guided tour, or access:

• ​Configuration → edit a location or sublocation → Categories

• Then go to analytics or dashboards and configure any "by category" datablock.

Examples

Example A — A building with submetered HVAC and Lighting 

• HVAC and Lighting are metered directly → set those to From device

Total Electricity consumption can be:

• From subcategories if all major uses are covered
• Or From device if a main meter exists

Example B — Microgrid site (PV + battery + grid import/export) 

1. Configure Import, Export, Generation, Storage charge/discharge meters
2. Set Electricity → Consumption to From energy balance

Result: consumption is computed consistently even when site flows are complex.

Example C — Complex site with multiple sublocations 

• You are measuring the heating of several sublocation inside a main location - configure that category in each sublocation
• In the location select the option Automatic (by default) or From child location

Result: the total heating consumption across all sublocations in your portfolio will be computed automatically

Example D — Partial or full portfolio overview 

• You have a large portfolio segmented into different zones (like regional geographic, countries,...) and tags (type of building, ...)
• Configure the categories and subcategories of each location (using the bulk configuration for fast set-up)
• You can automatically get the aggregated values of each category / subcategory for each portfolio level (zone, tags, whole portfolio)

Bulk configuration (for large rollouts)

If you manage many locations, you can configure Categories via the bulk configuration Excel, where the Categories tab replaces the old “Ref. devices” tab.

Any category left blank stays Automatic.

Things to keep in mind

Aggregation limits (performance protection)

If you analyse long time ranges at high resolution with too many devices, aggregation may be limited depending on license, resolution, and period.

If you hit limits:

• Shorten the period
• Lower the resolution

Energy balance calculation method limitation

Energy balance is currently configurable for:

• Electricity → Consumption

And applies to specific parameters:

• Active energy
  Consumption 402 = Generation 452 + Storage discharge 452 + Import 402 − Export 452 − Storage charge 402
• Active power
  Consumption 401 = Generation 451 + Storage discharge 451 + Import 401 − Export 451 − Storage charge 401

Other parameters fall back to default behaviour.

Multiple devices per category (partials) are coming later

Right now you configure the total.

A later iteration will support:

• Partials + remainder natively

(replacing many “group” use cases)

In this article, we are going to learn how Categories offer a modern, flexible, and semantic way to manage, configure, and analyse energy data in the platform.

Aggregation limits overview (per license)