Importance

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Abstract

A system for monitoring power usage of various devices at remote facilities is described. The system employs sensors at each facility to sense the on/off condition of the devices. A processor at each facility, under the control of a host computer at a central location, stores the output data of the sensors in stripped-down form. The host computer specifies to the processor at each facility the time and date at which it should begin polling the sensors, the interval between pollings of the outputs of the sensors, the time and date at which the processor should report to the host computer and transmit the stored data, and the address location to be used when the processor initiates polling of the data. A master clock/calendar at the central location is used to synchronize the clock/calendars at each facility. Thus, only stripped-down data and power outage information are required to be stored by the processor and transmitted to the host computer, without the need to store or transmit any other data such as sensor identification or time and date of polling with each sampling of data. This results in reduction of memory storage requirements and transmission time. Alternatively, rather than storing the on/off condition of the devices, sensors which generate analog currents of voltages representing the amount of power being consumed by the device can be used in conjunction with A to D converters to digitize the information for storage and transmission to the host computer.

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First Claim