Edge Controller: Machine-Level Energy Monitoring

The challenge

A molding plant receives one electricity bill for the whole site. Inside that bill sit machines of very different sizes, running different molds, at different cycle times, on different shifts, and no one can say which of them is expensive. When the bill rises, the plant has no way to tell whether a machine is drifting, whether a particular mold is costly to run, or whether a shift is simply leaving machines heating with nothing to do. Energy is one of the largest controllable costs on the floor, and it was the one number nobody could attribute.

What we built

Sucetas designed and built the Edge Controller, model ST-EC01: a small serialised device that sits inside the machine's existing electrical cupboard, reads the energy meter already fitted there, and reports that reading onward over the plant's own network. Nothing is spliced into the machine's control wiring and the meter itself is not replaced. Because the reading arrives in the same system that already holds the production count for that machine, consumption stops being a site total and becomes a per-machine, per-mold, per-shift number that can be set against the parts actually made.

One bill, many machines, no attribution

Most plants know exactly what they paid for electricity last month and nothing at all about where it went. The meter at the gate is honest and useless: it is a single number covering a floor of machines that differ by tonnage, by mold, by cycle time and by how well they are running that week.

Without attribution there is nothing to act on. A machine that has quietly started drawing more than it should looks identical to one that is simply busy. A mold that is expensive to run looks identical to a cheap one. And a shift that leaves barrels heating through a long changeover leaves no trace at all.

A small device, in a place that already exists

The Edge Controller was designed to be unremarkable to install. It mounts inside the electrical cupboard that is already on the machine, beside the energy meter that is already fitted there, and it takes four connections: two for power and two for the link to the meter.

It does not replace the meter and it does not touch the machine's own control wiring. The meter stays the source of truth. The controller's job is simply to carry that reading to the plant system, continuously, without anyone writing anything down.

• Fits inside the existing panel, so no new enclosure is added to the machine
• Four connections per unit, and that is the whole install
• The existing energy meter remains the measuring instrument
• Reports over the plant's own network, to the plant's own system

Energy sitting next to the part count

The point of the device is not the reading. It is where the reading lands. Because consumption arrives in the same platform that already knows how many good parts that machine produced in that hour, on that mold, in that shift, the two can be read together.

That turns a site-level cost into an operational one. Energy per part becomes a number you can compare between machines running the same mold, between shifts running the same machine, and between this month and last. It also makes the quiet losses visible: the machine that consumes at a normal rate while producing nothing is exactly the machine that never shows up on an electricity bill.

• Consumption per machine, per mold and per shift instead of per site
• Energy set against the parts the machine actually produced
• Comparison between machines running the same tool
• Consumption during downtime made visible rather than absorbed

Every unit is accounted for

Hardware that lives inside twenty-one different panels needs to be traceable, or a year later nobody knows which box is which, whether one has been swapped, or whether the unit in front of them is even ours.

Each Edge Controller carries its own serial number and a tamper seal, and each can be checked against our register by scanning the code on the unit. A genuine device returns its record. Anything else is reported as unrecognised.

Where this is now

The rollout covers twenty-one machines at Tech Arch Autocomp, on the same floor already monitored by our injection molding monitoring system. Units are built, serialised and being commissioned machine by machine.

We are deliberately not publishing savings figures yet. Energy claims are only worth anything once they rest on a full baseline against a measured period, and that comparison is still being collected. What the plant has today is attribution: a consumption figure with a machine's name on it, sitting next to that machine's output.

Inside the system

What it does

What changed

• Electricity consumption now attributable to an individual machine
• Energy readable against the parts that machine produced
• Consumption comparable between machines running the same mold
• Energy drawn during downtime and changeover made visible
• Every unit serialised, sealed and individually verifiable
• No modification to any machine on the floor

Common questions