Create a Group in the Energy platform

In this article, you are going to learn how to create a Group and how to configure a "Remainder" Group on the Platform.

Contents of this article: 

• Introduction
• Requirements
• How to create a group?
• Types of Operations
• To take into account
• Use: What are they used for?

Introduction

The EMS platform offers the possibility of creating groups of devices in the locations. Groups allow you to make aggregations of the different devices assigned to the location in order to visualise the consumption of the set. 

Requirements

• Having a Location or sublocation configured. 
• Have devices assigned to their corresponding location.  

How to create a Group?

You can create a group of devices. This could be useful in order to analyse it on the "Analysis" menu.

1. Go to the "Location Configuration" menu and select the location in which you would like to create the group (in the "Settings" menu).

2. Click on "Groups" tab. 



3. Click on "New group".

• Write a distinctive name for the group.
• Add a description for this new group.
• Select all the devices that make up the group.
• Add the parameters that you want to have on the group.
• Choose the Operation. Check the available operations here.

Note: We recommend to set as parameters all frequency+parameter from the parameter that we want to put in the group. This is because there are functionalities in the platform that require a specific frequency, and we would need to come back to modify this information. If you want to visualize the group with the same available frequencies as the ones available on the devices that form that group, you must define them by adding each parameter with the corresponding frequency. 

4. Click "Save" and you are done!

You can see all the groups created in the "Groups" tab.

Types of operations available

The EMS platform offers different types of operations to define groups. Learn how to configure them.

• Sum
• Average
• Maximum
• Minimum
• Total
• Remainder

Configure a Sum group

Gives you the sum of the consumption of all the devices that set the group. Learn how to configure it above. 

Configure an Average, Maximum, Minimum group

You can calculate a group that indicates the Average, the Maximum or Minimum of all the devices included in the group. 

• Average

• Maximum

• Minimum

Configure a total group

This group has to be defined if you want to create a Distribution Widget on your Dashboards. In order to configure this kind of group, follow these steps:

1. Create a group as explained above.

2. Choose the Operation Total.

3. Choose the device that represents the total consumption.

4. Save the group. 

Example of use: 

This group is used when you want to benchmark the consumption of your site using a Distribution Widget. You might choose the device that contains the total consumption of your site on the operation selector. 

Remember that the device that has the information of the total consumption of your site must be assigned as the main reference device. 

Configure a Remainder group

1. Go to the "Settings" menu.
2. Click on "Groups" tab. 
3. To create a new group, click on "New group".  Write a name and a description. Select ALL sub-metering devices and also the main load. 
4. Specify for which parameters you want to create the group. Pick as much as you want and select “Remainder” operation. Select the main load meter on the next select list.

  

To take into account

When setting a group, the following restrictions must be taken into account: 

• Define all the frequencies that you want to visualize when you add parameters to the group. The group frequencies are not automatically calculated from the lower frequency as it is with the devices.
• Different frequencies of a parameter can be defined under the same group. 
• It is not possible to create groups with more than 1 operation at the same time (ex: only sums)
• In order to assign supplies and prices to a group, it is necessary to have the 30 min frequency of the parameter defined in the group. 
• It is possible to make a group composed of different parameters (the group will not aggregate different parameters but will be related and accessible via API).

Use: What are they used for?

Groups are used to visualise aggregated consumption of different devices assigned to the same location. From the sub-consumptions measured by different meters placed on the different parts of the installation, the total value can be calculated.