Perched upon a pier that juts into Sydney Harbour, Hugo’s Manly is a superb destination. However, outside the beautiful Spring & Summer weather the owners decided that some really big heaters were going to be needed for the colder evenings. They then turned the problem over to Dave Coxon from DJW Projects.
However a quick count of the heaters required plus a little calculation on the power supply revealed a problem: THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH POWER TO RUN THE KITCHEN, BAR & HEATERS ALL AT ONCE!
Along with Dr Ed Coxon & Jamie Wells, DJW’s Head of Integration, Dave developed a quirky algorithm to manipulate the supply versus base load problem. Using AMX and a whole bunch of CT’s, DJW Projects set about collecting data from the building regarding its current draw. Each heater was then installed on its own 20 amp lighting dimmer channel. As the buildings draw exceeds supply the heaters drop load across a dump priority system. This base calculation is now the basis for DJW’s green energy heating system for commercial spaces. This system offers the end user a power bill for their heaters that is representative of how busy they are. How many times have you had your heaters on under your awnings and had no one sitting there? It’s wasting energy. DJW are proud to release Green Heater Control. Utilising motion detection, DJW can turn the heating system on, up or down, depending on whether there are actually people in the space. As well as being installed new, this system can also be retro fitted to an existing system.
The entire venue is driven from a 7 inch AMX touchscreen sitting on the front counter. The AMX interface is simple & intuitive for the user & can be programmed to control just about anything non-human. The staff can control audio in any zone, control the volume of it & the actual music playing software from the interface.
The big issue, as mentioned, was the heating drawing too much power but they can easily turn up or down the heating with the interface. However, in the background we have an over ride system where if the venue needs extra power, it automatically drops some of the heaters down in very small percentages so the difference is hardly noticeable. We do that by monitoring the current draw to the various facets of the venues, we look at the main current draw coming into the venue, we look at the current draw of the building and the current draw of the heaters.
That’s all tied together with some feedback loops which gives us the information to enable us to adjust things as per what is required to keep the main below the maximum current. The technical machinery that chugs along out of sight includes Clipsal C-Bus which controls all of the lighting and the blinds. LSC EKO dimmers run across all of the heaters. Audio components include Lab.gruppen amplifiers, Symetrix processing, and EAW speakers.
Dave Evans, Hugo’s owners, stated “I’m not great on a computer and I’m certainly not a tech-head but this is so simple to operate. It controls our heaters, blinds, audio, lighting, alarm system, kitchen exhaust, air conditioning. At the end of the night I press one button and it turns everything off, drops the blinds and sets your alarm. It’s an amazing concept plus it runs the EM Stream music system. Dave Coxon & DJW Projects did a great job programming it.”
This project won the 2009 ‘ENVIRONMENTAL & ENERGY EFFICIENCY’ award from NECA.