Incremental energy

Incremental energy allows you to define a start time, end time, and the time interval (increments) for incremental energy accumulation.

At the end of each interval, the energy accumulated during that period is stored. By default, the meter only records the previous interval’s incremental energy and the instantaneous energy accumulations in the active interval.

The first interval of incremental energy accumulation begins at the specified start time. Incremental energy ends at the specified end time, which may result in a truncated interval if the interval duration does not divide evenly into the overall incremental energy duration. For example, an interval duration of three hours with an overall duration of five hours truncates the last interval duration to two hours. The latest value for the specified end time is midnight (24:00).

Your start time must be before the end time and after midnight, and the period over which incremental energy is accumulated cannot include midnight. This is because your meter’s start and end times are defined relative to midnight.

Start: 6AM, End: 12AM, interval: 3 hrs	Incremental energy accumulates from 6AM to midnight in intervals of 3 hours.
Start: 6AM, End: 2AM, interval: 3 hrs	Incremental energy will not function. End time must be after start time and before or equal to midnight.

Incremental energy helps provide information for analyzing energy and power usage against present or future utility rates, and is useful for measuring energy consumption by shift or for a specific process.

When configuring incremental energy, shorter incremental energy periods provide more granular data which can make the data easier to use for comparison purposes.

Incremental energy example

Start time: 8AM or 08:00
End time: 12AM or 24:00
Interval: 420 minutes (7 hours)

First interval (08:00 to 15:00)
Second interval (15:00 to 22:00)
Third interval (22:00 to 24:00)

The first incremental energy interval is from 8AM (start time) to 3PM, and is 7 hours long. The second incremental energy interval is from 3PM to 10PM, and is also 7 hours long. The third interval is from 10PM to 12AM, and is only 2 hours long because 12AM is the specified end time. These intervals repeat every 24 hours until the configuration is changed or incremental energy feature is disabled.

Related topics • See “Configuring incremental energy using ION Setup” on page 100 for instructions on how to configure your meter’s start and end times and interval values.