With the inclusion of alternative and renewable energy sources to your business environment, you might find it a challenge to know when to switch between environments, to gauge when peak hours are or how to make your renewable energy solutions work to help you save costs and cut back on grid usage. The Nviromon environmental and power management solution available from Netshield enables you to do just that.

The Nviromon speaks directly to the needs of companies who have made investments into multiple power sources, but finding it increasingly difficult to take control, as well as better understand their power environment.  

“Multiple power feeds / sources is very much the way of the future. But when do you know when to switch between sources, or more importantly opt to make use of renewable energy sources before switching back onto the grid?” asks Inus Dreckmeyr, CEO at Netshield South Africa. “With the Nviromon we give you back control of your power management, removing the guess work of having to switch between loads when you think it may be appropriate.”

With the Nviromon companies can set up their environment to run off of renewable sources first, guage when these are depleted and then move you back onto grid (Eskom) power, without disruptions to your business. Conversely, if you are load shed at a peak period and your renewable stores aren’t “charged” at capacity, it will tell your system to start up and revert to a generator, if this is included in your power environment.

A key benefit of the product is to ensure power stability and business continuity. This then subsequently enables customers to reap the most from their alternate energy investments and realise return on investment as well as gauge total cost of ownership in a qualified manner.

“Power management is a relatively new concept to South Africans, we know it is needed but seldom know when to start. What we have aimed to do is simplify and automate this process for you. The Nviromon decides on your behalf, based on qualified analysis of your environment and a structured set of predetermined rules, exactly which power source is best suited at any given moment,” adds Dreckmeyr.

“By quantifying and identifying peak times and even load shedding schedules, we will set up a series of triggers in the systems that then use a type of failover model to ascertain which power source is needed at that moment. What’s more is that it can be remotely managed, so you can deploy it on remote sites and still have a view of the power situation in these environments. One such application could be cell masts in remote areas as an example.”

Depending on your setup of the system, the Nviromon will always seek to use renewable first, only electing to revert to the grid if the load requires it, helping your business save on grid costs wherever possible. This is achieved via a series of pre-set priorities, determined by the company before installation, priorities range from one to four with four being the most severe-case scenario.

“In the future we are going to be billed more during peak times for our grid energy, it makes sense to be able to alternate between sources and the Nviromon gives you the power to do that,” states Dreckmeyr.

But the Nviromon is not just a power management solution; it is also an environmental monitoring solution that enables remote management of server rooms, or entire business networks, from a single management console and a single device. It can remotely open and close gates, serve as an alarm system when connected to movement sensors and sirens and inform users of power outages as well as other environmental threats outages through an SMS or email.