Natural Gas Measuring Device

[Turnipblood]

I have contacted our local nat gas supplier and a few vendors but to no avail. We are looking to add a device to measure the amount of nat gas we use. One we were told there was a device that would measure cubic ft per turn but haven't found it.
Does anyone know of a device where we can intigrate it into our BAS?
How are others measuring nat gas coming into a facility?

[qtip]

Have the supplier install a gas meter that gives a pulse for x amount of cubic feet used. Or add one of these http://www.imacsystems.com/Domestic_Meter_Pulser.pdf but most likely the gas supplier will go nuts on you because you added something to thier meter and will remove it.

[sycontrol]

Sonix 2000 gas meter

[MatrixTransform]

there are plenty of meters out there that will deliver a volume/pulse .
this will be good for correlating volume against yr gas bill, it probably wont however be any good for correlating dollars because you cannot know the gas pressure, and hence the gas density. most gas bills have a pressure correction factor that gets applied because the heating value of the gas depends on density.

[Turnipblood]

You guys ROCK!




Thanks. I can write the calculations in the logic to convert to therms and save the data no problem but no one (even called meter supplier) could give me anything that would deliver a pulse. I knew they were out there but the rep literally told me there was no such thing. If I can get a pulse I can do the rest. I am looking to do this w/ water meters also. since I am in the education business (public k-12) I am wanting to build an energy dashboard for each campus showing realtime data and collecting that data in ALC Energy Reports. If I can get this right it will automatically show monthly consumption, real time consumption and compare campuses to each other. I plan on setting up a keosk at each campus. maybe start a little rivalry. Again thanks.

[xarralu]

Just recently set up a Dattus III meter with a Modbus interface. This is also being brought into Energy Reports also. PIA to figure out what points to use, but works well. The interface can tell you ALOT of info, pressure, volume, even gas temperature and battery voltage.

[Turnipblood]

I am asuming you integrated it w/ WebCtrl. (PIA?) Did you bring it into the LGR or another way?

[xarralu]

WebCTRL wasn't the PIA, it was figuring out how to talk to the meter and how to get what I wanted out of it.
The first thing was to establish communication to it. The thing that is easy to skip over is that you have to power the DTR pin/wire
if you don't have it connected to a computer. So I used the 12 volts DC from the RNET connection (using an EQ-PRTL).
The other was what points to use and how to use them. (See Picture). I finally talked to tech support and they told me what was needed to get what I wanted.

[theoldman]

http://www.ge-mcs.com/en/flow/ultras...low-gc868.html

[Turnipblood]

WebCTRL wasn't the PIA, it was figuring out how to talk to the meter and how to get what I wanted out of it.
The first thing was to establish communication to it. The thing that is easy to skip over is that you have to power the DTR pin/wire
if you don't have it connected to a computer. So I used the 12 volts DC from the RNET connection (using an EQ-PRTL).
The other was what points to use and how to use them. (See Picture). I finally talked to tech support and they told me what was needed to get what I wanted.

Thanks. I've got an EQ-PRTL coming back from repairs. I'll give that a shot. Locate it about 6' from meter in conditioned space. Shouldn't be a problem. This should be a nice little fix.

Thanks.

[Turnipblood]

http://www.ge-mcs.com/en/flow/ultras...low-gc868.html

Thanks