Some days ago we launched a new feature in our Energy Management solution, DEXMA, and now it is ready to use once you access the Platform.
The sublocations feature will change the way you control and manage the energy consumption in your projects. We believe this is key to users. We encourage you to keep on reading. You’ll learn how to defeat your challenges with DEXMA from now on!
What Are Sublocations
Sublocations are a change in DEXMA hierarchies (old name DEXCell). Up until today, you were able to create a project on the platform with one location. That is to say, one physical location: a geographical point where you have a consumption meter (or several).
With those meters you could control a building’s energy consumption, of course. However, many of our clients are working on projects that are… let’s say a bit more complex. Within these projects, one meter is not equal to a whole geographical unit, for example, it’s just a part of a bigger entity.
And here is where sublocations can contribute. From now on you will be able to create a location, plus as many sublocations as you want inside that location, all according to what your energy project needs.
Sublocations: Uses Real Examples
We could make an endless list of how you can use sublocations in Energy Management. But today’s goal is not to bore you to death 😉
Fast track for learning: access to the sublocations webinar >>
Lets take a quick look to a couple of examples. Imagine that you’re working on a monitorized supermarket. We have meters in different areas, for example, one in the freezers, another one in bakery, and so on.
In the past, we could only create a global location and add all the devices of our supermarket inside of it. Thus, if you wanted to compare the freezer’s consumption from all your supermarket’s chain, it was complicated. Currently, you can create the level needed and divide your location into as many areas as desired.
This way, you will have everything controlled under the same project, and the consumption areas (no matter which ones) separated into particular divisions. The ability to compare between different divisions and periods allows for a more efficient and easy process.
If a supermarket is a tiny space for you, let’s think about how this new feature can impact on the savings and the energy efficiency path of a hospital. For instance, we could divide the hospital by floors. Further, in each floor, we can create an area for operating rooms and another one for the patients’ rooms. You don’t want any failures in the ORs but maybe it’s worth trying to optimize the lighting in the patient’s area.
Divide and rule! Why you should use sublocations
Sublocations are key for certain Energy Efficiency projects so let’s go over each of these cases:
- If your project has a couple of locations that must share the same meter… to which one did you associate the meter with? No longer a problem! This is really common when we need to share temperature probes in two locations in the same city. Assign the probe to the superior element in the hierarchy and all the levels under it will have it ready to use.
- Projects where you monitor an area with sublocations below it. The new hierarchy system is much more intelligent than the previous one. Now there will be no duplications when you monitor an area and a location in the same branch of the hierarchy. Problem solved!
- Large projects with few locations BUT with many meters, like factories, hospitals, universities, or airports. The level of location was not enough for you, but then again: now this problem is solved!
Don’t worry if your project is not between these specific cases, because it will be benefited from working with sublocations either way, with a faster set up of any of the different situations possible, so that you have under control any possible scenario.
Control is indeed one of the main advantages that you’ll notice from the first minute of working with sublocations. Can you imagine the level of detail that you can achieve by comparing between freezers, lines of production etc.?
How-To Create Sublocations in DEXMA
Don’t be afraid: sublocations are new in DEXMA, but it’s EXTREMELY easy to work with them.
First a couple of things you need to know about how they work in the software:
- The set up of the superior entity is inherited by sublocations. This new “heritage” concept means that when we associate a generic value to any point in the hierarchy, all the locations under that point will have that value. However, you can associate different and specific values to all the elements in the hierarchy.
- Now the meters will be associated to just one element. For example, imagine you associate a temperature probe to the area 1 in the previous graph, and another probe to the area 2. They will be independent. And, on top of that, everything below the area 2 inherits that information.
- The apps in our market can be installed as tabs inside each location. Do you need to add the facility plan? Do you need the building’s elements inventory? We can help you create your own apps to solve these needs.
To learn how to work with sublocations like a pro, access to our free training webinar and the pdf presentation on how this new feature works in the DEXMA Platform.
Do you want to give it a try? If you don’t have a DEXMA account yet, please check our DEMO video now!
