Identify your peaks in the Platform

In this article you're going to learn how to identify your peaks in the EMS Platform. 

Contents of this article:

• Introduction
• Punctual peaks
• Accumulated data peaks

Introduction

Sometimes, you might find irregularities or “peaks” in your data that are the result of incorrect values sent by meters. These can be caused by single erroneous readings that can be eliminated using Delete Readings from a gateway, or they can be due to a change in a device's readings when there are accumulated readings. Both cases will be addressed in this article. Once you have identified your peaks, learn how to delete them. 

Identify Punctual peaks

This is the case where you have single readings that distort the analysis. Normally, the peaks are produced as a result of an erroneous value being sent by the meter. These spikes can be produced by mistake or after deleting a series of erroneous readings. 

To identify the timestamp where the spike occurs, you should go to any Analysis Screen an check the device consumption, such as the Consumption screen. In the screenshot below, the spike happens on the 1st of May.

Result:

Solution: Use delete readings to delete the wrong value. 

Identify Accumulated data peaks

Normally, meters in your facility are going to send the Energy data in a cumulative and incremental way, representing the consumption for a specific period of time. However, sometimes the datalogger might send outliers, causing peaks in the hourly curves and making the representation in the platform erroneous. For more information about Active Energy and its representation, click on the following support article: Understanding Active Energy. 

For this case, it is important to understand all the possible errors and how to solve them. These are the most habitual cases which cause peaks and how to deal with them:

• Peaks caused by an outlier
• Welcome peak
• Negative jump on the Active Energy value
  • Case 1
  • Case 2
• Positive jump on the Active Energy value
• Increase or decrease of the Active Energy value

Peaks caused by an outlier

Sometimes, gateways installed can send some outliers which differs from the cumulated curve of the Active Energy. Lower or higher values can be received and cause a negative or positive peak on the EMS Platform graphs.  

Result:

Welcome peak

Probably your meters will start sending data with a value greater than 0, as it will be their cumulative value and most likely they were installed on the facility some time ago. That would cause a jump in the first reading. 

Negative jump on the Active Energy value: case 1

Result:

Solution: In this case, the best option is to treat existing data before the peak. So, you should modify the previous data from the peak and make coincide the last value before the peak with the first value after the peak. The steps you should follow are: ​
 

• Download the Active Energy readings in Excel
• Treat the data in order to avoid the peak. In the previous example, the best option is to divide the cumulated consumption into 2 smaller increments in order to match the values. In that case, the  curve look likes as follows:

• Delete the wrong readings 
• Import new data on Excel using the EMS platform template. 

Negative jump on the Active Energy value - Case 2

Active Energy values must be cumulated. In the case that the fiscal meter makes a reset (automatically or manually), it should starts by 0 in order to avoid negative peaks.  We may encounter some situations where the fiscal meter makes a reset or change its value and don't start by 0 and still incrementing for a period of time and then makes a new reset.  

​ 

Result:

​
Solution: in this case, as we have a reset near the peak, solve this peak is easiest. What we have to do is to make start from 0 the data between the peak and the reset.  The steps we have to follow are the following: ​

• Download Active Energy readings in Excel. 
• Treat the data in order to avoid the peak. In the previous example, we will have to make the data set from 0 subtracting the jump value of the Active Energy to all the readings.
         

• Delete the wrong readings 
• Import new data on Excel using the EMS platform template. 

Positive jump on the Active Energy value

Active Energy values must be cumulated. We can find that the fiscal meter sends cumulated data correctly, but suddenly it starts counting with a higher value and starts growing again from that value.

Result:

Solution: in this case, the best solution is to modify the data received before the peak. We will have to modify the data in order to make coincides the last value before the peak with the first reading after the peak. That means, try to put to the same height both series of data. The steps to follow are:  

Increase and decrease of the Active Energy value

In this case, the data starts growing but the values can slightly decrease (ex: for the meters that monitors both consumption and production of energy). This situation will produce negative values. 

Result: