Source: http://www.google.com/patents/US7246014?dq=U.S.+Patent+
Timestamp: 2017-11-18 14:23:31
Document Index: 496656478

Matched Legal Cases: ['Application No. 60', 'Application No. 60', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1']

Patent US7246014 - Human machine interface for an energy analytics system - Google Patents
An Enterprise Energy Management (“EEM”) software system is disclosed that displays EEM data and allows a user to interact with the data to better understand and manage their electrical system. The EEM software system collects real-time, near real-time and historical input data from various data sources,...http://www.google.com/patents/US7246014?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US7246014 - Human machine interface for an energy analytics system
Publication number US7246014 B2
Application number US 10/774,814
Also published as CA2515159A1, EP1593072A2, US7409303, US20040225625, US20040225648, US20040225649, WO2004070507A2, WO2004070507A3
Publication number 10774814, 774814, US 7246014 B2, US 7246014B2, US-B2-7246014, US7246014 B2, US7246014B2
Inventors J. Bradford Forth, Peter C. Cowan, Douglas Stephen Ransom, Thomas S. Stevenson, Jeffrey W. Yeo
Patent Citations (9), Non-Patent Citations (1), Referenced by (110), Classifications (17), Legal Events (5)
US 7246014 B2
The present application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/445,788, entitled HUMAN-MACHINE INTERFACE FOR AN ENERGY ANALYTICS SYSTEM, filed Feb. 7, 2003, and U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/445,881, entitled ENERGY ANALYTICS FOR AN ENERGY DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM, filed Feb. 7, 2003, which is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/340,374, entitled PUSH COMMUNICATIONS ARCHITECTURE FOR INTELLIGENT ELECTRONIC DEVICES, filed Jan. 9, 2003, which is a continuation-in-part under 37 CFR § 1.53(b) of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/896,570, filed Jun. 29, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,944,555, issued Sep. 13, 2005, which is a continuation-in-part under 37 CFR § 1.53(b) of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/814,436, filed Mar. 22, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,751,562, issued Jun. 15, 2004, which is a continuation-in-part under 37 CFR § 1.53(b) of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/723,564, filed Nov. 28, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,961,641, issued Nov. 1, 2005, and a continuation-in-part under 37 CFR § 1.53(b) of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/068,431, filed Feb. 6, 2002, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,694,270, issued Feb. 17, 2004, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/798,723, filed Feb. 12, 1997, now abandoned, the entire disclosures of all of which are herein incorporated by reference.
“IDENTIFYING ENERGY DRIVERS IN AN ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM”), filed herewith, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/775,761, the entire disclosures of which is herein incorporated by reference; and
“A METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR CALCULATING AND DISTRIBUTING UTILITY COSTS”, filed Feb. 6, 2004, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/773,488, the entire disclosures of which is herein incorporated by reference.
Referring to FIG. 1 a, the disclosed embodiments relate to an Enterprise Energy Management (“EEM”) software system 100 that may collect data from various types of EEM data sources and create useful information based on that data. The EEM software system 100 may also allow a user to perform what-if analysis, make changes in their system, and verify results based on the changes. As illustrated, the EEM software system 100 may include an EEM software server 101 that may be coupled with a network 102. As used herein, the network 102 should be broadly construed to include any one or more of a number of types of networks that may be created between devices using an Internet connection, a LAN/WAN connection, a telephone connection, a wireless connection, and so forth.
The EEM software server 101 may be coupled with a utility 107, a generator 108, a substation 109, and an industrial facility 110 and so forth. The entities 107–110 may record and report various types of EEM data that is sent to the EEM software server 101 as set forth in greater detail below. In addition, as used herein, the entities 107–110 should be construed to include various types of computer workstations located at these types of facilities that may connect with and use the EEM software application that is located on the EEM software server 101. As such, as referred to herein, the devices 107–110 should be construed broadly to include various different types of computing devices that may transfer various types of energy consumption data to the EEM software server 101, as well as access the EEM software server 101 to use the EEM software application located thereon.
In some of the disclosed embodiments, EEM system components may share EEM data with one another. While one illustrative embodiment of the EEM software system 100 is depicted in FIG. 1 a, it can be appreciated that an EEM system can be scaled out to include additional external data sources, or scaled down to include only internal data sources, such as only communications or data within a geographic location or area. EEM data may include, but is not necessarily limited to, Electrical Operation Data such as volts, amps, status, power; Power Quality Data such as harmonics, power factor, reliability (such as number of nines), disturbance data; Consumption Data such as energy and demand; Event Data such as set point actions, status changes and error messages; Financial Data such as energy cost, power factor penalties, revenue data, billing data such as tariffs for water, air, gas, electricity and steam; Environmental Data such as temperature, pressure, humidity and lightening/atmospheric disturbance data; Water Air Gas Electric Steam (“WAGES”) data; Configuration data such as frameworks, firmware, software, calculations involving EEM Data and commands; and Aggregated data, where at least one energy management datum is combined with other data points. For the purposes of this application, combined data includes aggregated data and computed data.
Referring now to FIG. 1 b, a sample EEM Analysis screen, i.e. Graphical User Interface (“GUI”) 115 is illustrated that may be generated by the EEM software application on the EEM software server 101. The EEM Analysis GUI 115 may depict EEM data in different formats, including both graphical and textual formats. A title bar 116 may be used to identify which EEM Analysis GUI 115 is depicted, providing a quick reference point for the user to establish context. An EEM Analysis selection field or control 117 allows the user to select what type of analysis they wish to create and view. In this example, a Dashboard option has been selected in the EEM Analysis control 117. The Dashboard may provide a single overview of the EEM software system 100, allowing a user to identify what is going on in the EEM software system 100 at a very high level. A description 118 (All Mills) may be provided to indicate what series or EEM system the EEM Analysis control 17 relates to. The description 118 could also be provided as a selection field, as will be discussed later.
The EEM Analysis GUI 115 may include a table 119 that sets forth various types of EEM data. The first column of the table 119 may set forth a plurality of operational units of interest 150, which could be departments, branches, physical locations, and so forth. Each row of the table 119 relates to a respective one of these operational units of interest 150, indicating the status of several categories or key performance indicators 120–125. The key performance indicators 120–125 can be energy cost/unit 120, cost projection 121, self generation 122, power availability 125, power quality 124, emissions 123, or other values based on the user needs and the set-up of the EEM software system 100.
For each operational unit of interest 150 and each key performance indicator 120–125, the EEM software system 100 may be configured with certain criteria indicating what is normal. Each cell in table 119 may have a symbol indicating the status of that key performance indicator 120–125 at that operational unit 150. In this example, normal performance may be indicated with a check mark, as illustrated at cell 142. Problem areas, for example where a set point or other operational guideline has been violated, may be indicated with an exclamation mark, as illustrated at cells 140, 141. When a certain key performance indicator 120–125 does not apply to an operational unit of interest 150, this may be marked with a dash, as illustrated at cell 143. It will be appreciated that various other symbols could be used to indicate these marks 140–143. Marks 140–143 allow a user to quickly identify which areas of interest are operating within the preset criteria and which areas are not. The marks 140–143 can be hyperlinked, allowing the user to click on them and drill down into other screens for further detail. In this way the user is able to analyze and manage their EEM system.
The operational unit 155 may be underlined, indicating that a hyperlink exists, allowing a user to click on the link and view a screen, possibly a web page, with performance indicators and other related data, such as weather, about operational unit 155. The time frame that the marks 140–143 are valid for is indicated at 130–132. The date-time selection field or control 132 may allow the user to select a date-time range they are interested in, such as the current day, this week, last week, last month, year to date, month to date and so forth. The exact date-time range currently being displayed is indicated at 130–131.
A description 205 provides a brief summary on which data is included in a charting area 224, which in this example is the cost breakdown for the total corporation. A vertical axis 215 of the charting area 224 specifies percentages and a horizontal axis 235 specifies date-time range. The vertical axis 215 could display other units as well, such as kilowatt/hours (“kWhs”), and so forth. A legend 225 may be used to indicate the usage type categories depicted in the chart. The chart area 224 displays a stacked column 220–223, which indicates both what percentage each usage type category contributes to the total cost, and what the actual dollar figure of that cost is. Although this chart shows only one series, where additional series are selected, they may appear as stacked columns beside this one.
A hierarchy control 280 allows the user to break down a series into selected groups. The selected groups can be broken down still further. In this example, if Lighting was selected, stacked columns 220–223 would each show a certain percentage (and cost) associated with Lighting. If Lighting is broken down still further in the hierarchy control 280, this change will be reflected in the charting area 224. The hierarchy control 280 may also be present in many of the EEM Analysis GUIs described below.
In the example illustrated in FIG. 3, the horizontal axis 321 depicts a date-time range of Year-to-date, with a resolution of month, as selected in the date-time range control. The vertical axis 320 depicts a cost range $0–$6000. The Filter control 330 has ‘Top 5’ selected. A charting area 325 shows a bar chart with the Top 5 months based on cost. It will be appreciated that many other values as described previously can be selected from the various controls, and that the filtered data can also be presented in other ways, such as side-by-side bars with the dates indicated by labels on the bars.
A Scenario Control 405 may allow the user to select what type of scenario they want to run. The scenario could be a filter, a ‘what-if’ query, a trend, comparison, statistics and so forth. A Query control 420 may provide an appropriate query structure to the user based on the Scenario Control 405 they have selected, simplifying the query building process by providing preset filters in intuitive forms. In this example, the user has selected a filter scenario in the Scenario Control 405. Accordingly, a filter query appears in the Query control 420. As noted above, based on alternate scenarios, alternate queries may be presented to the user. The user may compose a sentence from drop down menus 421–426 or other selectable menu types. The illustrated query is simply one sample query that the user could construct. The charting area 430 depicts a filter chart based on the query entered by the user in the drop down menus 421–426. It should be appreciated that although the Query control 420 depicts an English Language Query, that the Query control 420 could be implemented in various other formats and in other languages. A chart roll-up (not shown) and chart display type (not shown) also gives the user increased ability to display the query result in desired form. For example the chart roll-up may compress the data into time periods of a recorded interval, hour, shift, day, week, month, quarter or year, while the chart display type allows the user to choose between bar graphs, line graphs or tables.
In this example, a consumption measure 601 has been graphed against a driver 602, which in this example is Heating Degree Days. Data points 605 represent monthly consumption aggregates, as chosen from the date-time resolution control 615, graphed against Heating Degree Days. Line 610 has been extrapolated using linear regression analysis to give an indication of the trend of the data. In this example, the amount of kWh used increases as the Heating Degree Days parameter increases. A Range Control 615 allows the user to choose the range over which they want to see data. The range will vary depending on what the driver is and what units make sense for that driver. In this example, Custom Range has been selected, with values 0–200 automatically selected by the EEM software application to represent Heating Degree Days.
Lines of Best Fit (FIG. 8), Variances (FIG. 9) and CUSUM curves (FIG. 10–12) can be combined to provide a logical analysis for the user to step through. The Lines of Best Fit allow predictions to be made, the Variances allow the user to compare predictions to what actually happened, and the CUSUM curve shows the trend of the Variances over some time frame. In this example, a consistent slope in the CUSUM curve can show the quantified benefit (possibly financial) of changes made in a facilities energy system management or control. The graph depicted in charting area 645 of FIG. 10 shows the same data as that in charting area 631 of FIG. 9, with the difference that the CUSUM curve is showing a running total rather than the discrete values.
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U.S. Classification 702/60, 702/73, 702/57, 702/61
International Classification G06Q30/00, G06F3/01, G01D4/00
Cooperative Classification G01D4/004, G06Q50/06, G06Q30/04, Y04S20/322, Y02B90/242, G06Q10/10
European Classification G06Q30/04, G06Q10/10, G06Q50/06, G01D4/00R1