Setting Up the Central Plant Digital Twin

| Overview

The Chiller plants are set up in the chiller plant builder of the ClimaVision CPM. The chiller plant builder comes with a predefined equip component library and a canvas. The component library displays the equipment as present in the chiller plant available for chiller plant configuration by dragging and dropping the equipment from the equipment component library.

| Accessing Central Plant Builder

To access the plant builder from the CPM home screen,

Search/ Select the organization under which the CPM site is created, and the plant belongs.

The search bar displays an option to select a created plant or an option to add a new plant.

Click Add New Plant

The add new plant window displays.

Enter the name of the new plant, and search/ select a building from the select building field.

Click Save to confirm the plant.

The plant gets created and the builder displays, to start creating the digital twin of the plant.

The following table explains the options available in the plant builder.

Feature/ Option

Descriptions

Equipment Component Library

The equipment component library for a plant is populated with a predefined list of equipment that is defined during the building or site creation for the plant.

You can hover over the equipment in the equipment library to visualize the sub equips with sensor devices as well as the points contained in the same, as below:

You can see the different equips with the different hierarchies of points and sub-equips. for more information on hierarchy of equipment, sub-equipment, and points refer to the article Central Plant Equipment

Outside Temperature

This part of the builder provides outside temperature for the geo-coordinates of the location of the chiller plant the weather API.

Time

This part of the builder provides the time data of the chiller plant from the time series API.

Quick Reference Points

You can use this option to add points from the chiller plant and its equipment for quick reference.

Click Add Points to access the option.

The window to add the quick reference points displays, as below.

The window follows a paradigm similar to the PAM and custom visualizations.

The user query using tags and custom queries, to search and select points, and add them to the view.

Search and add tags to filter points, as below.

Query using a custom query to filter points, as below.

placeholder for the capability.

Once the points are filtered out.

Select and add the points to the view as below.

Once the points are added for the quick reference view, the historized data for the same can be visualized, as below.

Note: only four points in this view is readily visible, the rest can be visualized using the drop -down arrow provided, as below.

Click the edit option to further add or delete points from the quick reference view. as below.

The quick reference edit window displays.

Use the cross to delete point from the view.
Uncheck the points to hide from view.
Click Add Point to add more points to the view.
Click Save to confirm the edits carried out.

Hide Equipment Component Library

You can use this option to hide the equipment component library

This option lets the user to better work with the builder canvas. as below

Click the show equipment option to bring back the equipment component library.

Builder Canvas

Builder canvas is a major part of the CPM. This is where the actual chiller plant digital twin is built.

Users can drag and drop equipment from the equipment library into the builder canvas and start building the required, establish pipe connections, and insert the required sensors (Temperature & pressure), and meters (BTU & Energy) into pipe connections.

Drag-drop the equipment into the canvas and place the equipment as per the requirement to build the plant twin, as in the below example.

Example 1

For more information on Builder Canvas refer to the section Building Central Plant.

Alert Criticality legends

This part of the builder provides the color-coded legends to understand the status and type of alerts configured for the chiller plant and its equipment.

You can visualize a circle with the above colors, below the equipment, depicting the status and type of alerts configured for the chiller plants.

Green	depicts alerts are configured for the equipment in the plant.
Grey	depicts alerts are not configured for the equipment in the plant.
Red	depicts a severe alert configured for the equipment is active.
Yellow	depicts a moderately severe alert configured for the equipment is active.
Blue	depicts a low severity alert configured for the equipment is active.

Below is an example of the alert's status of equipment in a Central Plant.

Zoom in Zoom out and Fit to Screen

Screenshot 2024-07-09 152006.png

The zoom-in and zoom-out options let the user to zoom in or zoom out to better visualize the equipment in the canvas. The fit to screen option fits the equipment as per the screen size on the canvas.

My plant

You can use this option to visualize a plant created in the builder.

CPM builder and Plant Theme

You can use this option to switch between themes for the chiller builder and the chiller visualizer.

You can switch between a night and a day theme, as below.

Night Theme:

Day Theme:

| Building Central Plant

Building the chiller plant is the most critical part of the CPM process. Getting an effective and clearly set up twin would ease the user to better understand the plant and its parts.

CPM comes with various functionalities to help the support user easily build better-looking plants.

To better understand the functionalities let's build a plant from scratch.

Drag-drop the chiller into the canvas.

The chiller along with the sub-equipment are brought into the builder Canvas as below.

You can see the chiller comes with the following sub-equip and Point.

- condenserWaterEnteringPipeEquip
  - condenserWaterEnteringTempSensorPoint
- condenserWaterLeavingPipeEquip
  - condenserWaterEnteringTempSensorPoint
- chilledWaterLeavingPipeEquip
- chilledWaterEnteringPipeEquip

Drag-drop the building load onto the canvas.

The building load along with the sub-equipment are brought into the builder Canvas as below.

You can see the building load equipment comes with the following sub-equip and Point.

- chilledWaterLeavingPipeEquip
  - chilledWaterLeavingTempSensorPoint
- chilledWaterEnteringPipeEquip
  - chilledWaterEnteringTempSensorPoint

Drag-drop the single cooling tower equipment onto the canvas.

The cooling tower along with the sub-equipment is brought into the builder Canvas as below.

You can see the cooling Tower equipment comes with the following sub-equip and Point.

- condenserWaterEnteringPipeEquip
  - condenserWaterEnteringTempSensorPoint
- condenserWaterLeavingPipeEquip
  - condenserWaterLeavingTempSensorPoint
Click the main equipment to disassociate the sub-equipment from the main equipment.

The equipment and equipment view manipulation window displays

Uncheck the equipment you wish to disassociate from the main equipment

Click Save Config to confirm the disassociation of the equips.

You can see the sensor equips are disassociated from the main equipment cooling tower.

Note: The above disassociation is only possible when no connection is established between two min equipment in the plant.

Drag-drop the corresponding header pipes equipment onto the canvas next to the corresponding main equipment pipes.

Note: Header pipes are the pipes that connect the sub-equipment pipes of the main equipment.

Drag and drop a Chilled water supply header pipe in with the chilled water supply pipes, as below, so that a good connecting angle is achieved.

You can see the chilled water header equipment comes with a chilled water supply header pressure sensor/ sensor point.

Hover to ends of the header pipe to locate a "+" sign, and extend the pipe to connect to the chilled water supply pipe of the building load.

Note: Once a header pipe is connected to any pipe of the main equipment, the end of the header pipe is denoted by a broken pipe symbol as shown above.

To delete an extended part of a header pipe.

Right-click on the extended header pipe part as below.

Click the cross icon to delete the extended section of the header pipes, as below.

Click the orientation icon to change the orientation of the header pipe used.

Use the above step to establish the connections from the main equipment pipes to the header pipes as below.

Note: As a best practice to achieve results during connections, start your connections from the start of the flow.

Example:

Connect the end of the chilled water supply pipe of the chiller to the header pipe, and from the other end of the header pipe to the chilled water supply pipe of the building load.

Use the above strategy to best possible connections.

Drag and drop the required number of header pipes onto the canvas.
Repeat all the required steps from above the establish all the necessary connections, as below.

Drag and drop the required pumps and btu meters and other required sensors, as below.

You can see the Btu meter comes with a sensor that can be used for chilled water leaving or entering temperatures.

Note: The pumps, btu meters come predefined, so trying to use them in a different flow or circuit or pipe the system does not let the user do so.

Click any of the main equip to access the configuration window, to delete the equipment from the canvas.

Click the review option to review the plant established.

Click the exit review option exit review.

Use Save draft or Delete draft, to save or delete the draft established.

Below are a few examples of plant digital twins, that can be established using the CPM capabilities.

Example 1

Example 2

| Configuring Views for the Plant

Once a chiller plant digital twin is established, the same can be configured for three different types of views.

Following are the three types of views that can be configured for a chiller plant.

Master View
Hover View (Planned for phase two)
Click view (Planned for phase two)

For more information on the Master view configuration of a chiller plant refer to Central Plant Master View Configuration

For more information on the Hover view configuration of a chiller plant refer to Central Plant Hover View Configuration

For more information on the Click view configuration of a chiller plant refer to Central Plant Click View Configuration

| Publishing the Plant

Once the master view configuration for the equipment in the chiller plant are completed.

Click Save Draft to save the plant with the configurations.
Click Publish to publish the plant.

| Visualizing the Saved/ Published Plant

Once a plant is saved for a final time or published, or during the draft stages of the plant the same can be visualized from the My Plant window.

Combine Callouts Option:

The My Plant window provides another interesting option that lets the user view the information in the master view in four different ways.

Following are the types of combined callout options that are available for use

Status View
Parameter Values
Parameter name and values
Parameter name and the trend graph.

Status View:

It is the default view of the plant in the "My plant" screen and is also the minimalist view for a plant.

This view would display the name of the equips and sub-equips, which include the connection pipe details as well, along with the status of the equipment as in the status rings below the equipment. This indicates the operational and alert status of the equipment enabling continuity of operation and preventive maintenance.