Studies show that factories/industries lose up to 110 hours/month due to downtime and spend 15-20% excess on production costs in electricity. That is a lot of resources going to waste, right?

But why is it happening? 

When you have an industry with multiple critical equipment, running 14-18 hours/day (sometimes even 24hrs), it is obvious that you overload the machines. The long working hours, the unknown power inefficiencies, and occasionally operational mishaps lead to unexpected downtime, resulting in loss of time and money (for servicing). There are operational heads and staff in place but being humans, it is almost impossible to keep track of all the equipment at all times. Most of the time, identifying a power inefficiency happens after facing the consequence (machine shutdown, repairs etc) because it can't be known by our naked eyes unless it happens.

One might argue that the way these machines work, you can’t handle them with utmost care which affects the productivity of the industry. Agreed! But that doesn't mean we leave machines like they are, right? Hence came up with Soul.

Soul, an IoT dashboard supported with hardware, reduces downtime by 30hrs/ month and brings down production costs in electricity by 5-10%. 

But how is Soul doing it?

Soul keeps track of all key electrical parameters of the machine on a minute-to-minute basis and the ML behind will identify any power inefficiencies or operational inefficiencies. But the most important feature is that the ML also generates automated reports with actionable insights to fix this issue, preventing a potential breakdown or a repair. On top of this, Soul also keeps track of your emissions data and helps you with your sustainability goals. 

But how is Soul installed? Does it require a lot of infrastructural changes?

Absolutely no! Installation of Soul can be done as easily as you install a Wi-Fi router. Here are a few pictures of Soul installed at our client sites. 

More information about the installation of Soul here.

All of this sounds good, but is there a real-life example to show what Soul can achieve? Here’s a case study from one of our clients to understand better.

This is an industry with over 50 machines in place and works three shifts a day. Soul was installed in this industry and here are the findings - 

Phase Imbalance - 

In a specific zone, there was a phase imbalance because of multiple single-phase loads on the red phase. This might cause short circuits on an overall space level, resulting in downtime and high repair charges. 

Power Inefficiency - 

Another zone was operating on a continuous low power factor value, with the highest value being 0.25. This was because of the inductive loads at which the machines in this zone are operating. 

Time of Day tariff (ToD) - 

A graph showing energy consumption patterns in peak and non-peak hours, suggesting ways to distribute consumption to optimize the electricity charges.

Abrupt Machine Shutdown - 

Abrupt and unscheduled shutdowns were noted and reported.

Consumption Vs Output -

A very important metric which would help you correlate energy consumption trends with productivity. Helps you understand if the highest consumption days are resulting in highest production as well.

Emissions data -

Scope 2 emission data useful for emission reporting and net-zero goals, if any.

All the issues will be mentioned in the ML-generated reports along with the relevant action points to fix them. Also, these points will be segregated as High impact, Medium impact and Low impact categories, making it easy for the clients to understand the criticality of the issue.

And we’ve realized that such issues could reoccur or new types of issues over a period of time. We understood that power consumption followed by inefficiencies is a continuous process and developed Soul in such a way that it always puts you on the top of the game in terms of predictive maintenance.

Please do visit us on the website or contact us at contact@zodhyatech.com for more information and maybe tell your friends about it too. It will go a long way in keeping our energy and environment managed better.