ADDRESSING THE DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES OF DEPLOYING REMOTE MONITORING AND CONTROL SOLUTIONS FOR GENERATORS.

System design and vendor business model are critical to the successful deployment of a remote monitoring and control solution for generators.

AMPS Power wanted to understand more about the impact of system design and a vendor’s business model. We spoke to Chris Begent, Commercial Director at Telemisis, the leading supplier of remote monitoring and control solutions to the generator industry, to discuss their approach.

AMPS Power: Thank you for talking to us Chris. As a new member of AMPS, could you tell us a about Telemisis?

Chris Begent: Telemisis has been developing remote monitoring and control solutions, since 1999, with our first generator monitoring solutions deployed in 2002. Our team has over 100 years combined experience in remote monitoring and control of machine fleets and have worked with leading generator operators, globally.

Our in-house hardware, firmware and software expertise, and a highly integrated manufacturing partnership, through our membership of Simpatica Group, gives us unparalleled control over quality and the endto- end performance of SitePro.

AP: What is SitePro and what does it enable generator companies to do?

CB: SitePro is our remote monitoring and control solution for generators and other machines such as compressors, chillers, and air handers. We’ve evolved SitePro over many years to meet the needs of our customers in the industry. To make deployment even easier, we recently made SitePro, including node hardware, and cellular airtime, available “as-aservice”. This enables fleet operators to scale their investment as their demands change over time.

We believe there are two drivers to introduce SitePro. The first being to provide a means of differentiation, through providing enhanced service levels across their entire fleet, even to the extent of providing a fully managed service to their customers.

The second driver is to reduce fleet operating costs. This is achieved by using the data harvested from remote assets in operational and support processes. Guiding decisions on such things as the need for preventative maintenance, enabling tighter management of the fuel supply chain, enhancing asset security, and eliminating unnecessary support visits. We’ve even seen examples where customers have used SitePro to remotely shut off generators to prevent catastrophic engine failures, saving many hundreds of thousands of pounds.

AP: How do companies wishing to introduce remote monitoring and control, deliver a consistent service experience when they operate generators, and other machines, from a range of manufacturers?

CB: One of the first design decisions we made when developing SitePro, was that the system should be controller and machine agnostic. As well as supporting contact-based operation the system now supports over fifty controllers and growing. This means the same SitePro system can be used across and entire fleet and to be used for other applications, where there is no controller, such as monitoring of fuel storage tanks.

As SitePro can be used across an entire fleet, regardless of controller or machine supplier, a single integration with existing back-office systems, such as ERP, finance etc., is required. Again simplifying deployment. As a result the same capabilities and therefore experience can be delivered, fleet wide. It also has a number of additional benefits, for example, reduced training and a consistent support interface.