Apps Market - Carbon Emissions App

Laura CARBO

08 July 2024 12:13

In this article, you're going to learn everything about the Carbon Emissions App.

Contents of this article:

Introduction
Available frequencies
Available parameters
Requirements
How does it work?
To keep in mind

Introduction

This App allows you to analyse the Carbon footprint associated at your consumption by tracking up to 9 different Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Emissions related variables (Methane, Nitrous Oxide...) from all your energy sources, and export the results to an Excel spreadsheet.

Available frequencies

This app has the following available frequencies to visualise the carbon emissions:

Daily
Weekly
Monthly

The app calculates carbon emissions from the energy parameters on your existing devices. The energy frequency required by the app to properly calculate the carbon emissions is, at least, hourly.

If the daily resolution is available, the app will automatically calculate the weekly and monthly resolutions. However, if only the weekly resolution is available, it will not calculate the monthly resolution.

NOTE: calculated carbon emissions from groups are not available at the moment.

Available parameters

This app allows you to calculate the equivalent emissions for any parameter that you have on your account. The available emission parameters are:

550 - Carbon Equivalent Emissions (kg eq.)
551 CO2 - Carbon dioxide Emissions (kg)
552 CH4 - Methane Emissions (kg)
553 N2O - Nitrous Oxide Emissions (kg)
554 O3 - Ozone Emissions (kg)
555 CFCs - Chlorofluorocarbons Emissions (kg)
556 HFCs - Hydrofluorocarbons Emissions (kg)
557 SF6 - Sulfur Hexafluoride Emissions (kg)
558 NF3 - Nitrogen Trifluoride Emissions (kg)

The default units are listed for each parameter, but they can be modified in the parameters section.

Requirements

You will need to install the application before using it, using the App market.
In order to configure the app, you should be superAdmin or Admin for the account. Otherwise, you should contact the administrator of your account.

Once the app is configured, users with access to the visualisation section will be able to use the app.

How does it work?

Configuration

Go to Settings --> Carbon Emissions. Create a new Carbon Emission conversion factor by clicking the "New" button:

In the following screen, define all the Carbon Conversion Factors that you are going to apply to the desired emission types and the energy source that you wish to track (in this case, electricity).
As introduced before, there are many Emission types to choose (all listed in the picture below).

Once you choose the Energy Source, you can add as many Emission types and Conversion factors' periods as you need. For example, for each Emission type, the Conversion factor may change from year to year, so you could define a different coefficient for each year.

The different elements in the interface are listed below:

1. The period in which Value 2 is valid.
2. Value of the Carbon Conversion Factor.
3. Add new periods with other Carbon Conversion Factors to the same Emission type.
4. Add new emission types for the same Energy Source.

Once the configuration is done, you will have to assign these Carbon Emissions to the devices that you want in the Locations where they are assigned. To do this, you should go to Settings --> Locations and choose the desired location.

A tab called Assign carbon emission factors will be available in the location configuration. Once you click on it, you will see:

1. Available devices in the location
2. Carbon Emissions previously created

To assign the Location's devices to each Carbon Emission, you just have to drag and drop from 1 to 2 and press the "Assign button" below.

Recalculation

Once everything is set up, the configuration's final step is to recalculate the values for the Carbon emissions for the desired period.

To do that, you will have to go back to Settings --> Carbon Emissions and click on Recalculation. You will see then a screen like the one below.

Select the devices for which you want to recalculate the Carbon Emissions and the period for which you would like to do it.

Once you do this, you will have to accept the DPs generated by the App for each emission type in the gateway of each device (Settings --> Gateways --> Devices).

Note 1: It is important to know that the values are calculated once a day, at 3 am in the morning. You can however recalculate the devices manually on demand.

Note 2: If recalculation for an emission is failing, make sure to double check that the conversion factor for that emission includes the period that you are trying recalculate.

Analysis screen

Once the configuration is done, the data can be visualised in the Analysis section: Analysis --> Carbon emissions.

This screen is similar to the Consumption screen. For each Energy source and Emission type, you can see the devices that have data in the selected period with 3 available frequencies: daily, weekly and monthly.

As can be seen in the picture above, you have the option of exporting the data to an Excel spreadsheet.

Below the chart, a table lists the Total, Average, Median, Max and Min emissions.

To keep in mind

Pricing

This is a free app, so you won't have to pay to download it. However, as it is an app that creates datapoints, all of them will be charged according to your pricing, as if they were billable datapoints sent from the field.

Like any other parameter in the platform, they will be available on every screen possible, according to the parameter type.

More information

If you want more information about Carbon Reporting, don't hesitate to take a look at our Webinar Automated Carbon Reporting & GHG Emissions Reporting.