Patent ID: 8024492

Claim:
A method of managing a power monitoring and control informational system, said method comprising creating different device types, including tags associated with each of said device types, each of the device types including a name of a device type and a driver for the device type; creating at least one device profile for each of said device types, the device profile including at least one tag; automatically detecting, by a detection system in the power monitoring and control informational system, a plurality of intelligent electronic devices in the power monitoring and control informational system, each of the intelligent electronic devices being configured to measure characteristics of electricity and to quantify the measured characteristics as corresponding characteristic data, the intelligent electronic devices being of varying types, the at least one tag including a name of a first of the measured characteristics, a unique identifier distinct from all other tags, and metadata having attributes used to categorize data corresponding to the first measured characteristic; providing an option to a user to create a user-defined device profile for a first of the detected intelligent electronic devices, the option including options to create a new device profile or to create a modified device profile by modifying a copy of data representing an existing device profile; and automatically selecting one of the device types based on the user-defined device profile.