Compressed air
energy monitoring
kWh, running load and hours for every compressor, paired with the data the compressor controllers already hold. Add a flow meter and you can track the energy cost of each cubic metre of air.
THE PROBLEM
Compressed air is one of the costliest utilities on site
Compressed air is convenient, so plants use a lot of it. It is also inefficient to make, and a compressor room can be one of the largest electrical loads on a site. Leaks, artificial demand and compressors running unloaded quietly add to that cost every shift.
Fixed-speed screw compressors are a common example. When demand drops they unload but keep spinning, drawing a significant share of full-load power while producing nothing. Several compressors with poorly staged pressure bands can spend hours this way.
Without data, nobody sees it. The compressors keep pressure up, so production is happy, and the room sits behind a door no one opens.
HOW WE SET IT UP
Power per compressor, then the air side
A meter on every compressor
Each compressor gets its own sub-meter, which shows kWh, running load and time. Loaded, unloaded and stopped states are clear from the power trace.
Pair with the controller data
Modern compressor controllers expose pressure, loaded hours, unloaded hours and alarms over Modbus. Our gateway reads them alongside the meters for a complete room picture.
Add flow for specific energy
Specific energy, kWh per cubic metre of air, needs a flow measurement on the compressor room header. Where a flow meter exists we read it; where it does not, we plan one with you.
Leaks show up at night
When production stops, demand should fall close to zero. Compressor load during idle shifts and weekends shows the leak load directly, and RIOD Live tracks it week by week.
AT A GLANCE
Compressed air monitoring at a glance
- Measured
- kWh, running load and time per compressor; pressure and loaded hours from controllers
- Hardware
- Smart energy sub-meters; RS485 Modbus IoT gateway for compressor controllers and flow meters
- Connectivity
- Wi-Fi, 4G or Ethernet from the compressor room
- Security
- MQTT over TLS 1.2 from every device
- Data goes to
- RIOD Live cloud, or the platform deployed on your own server
- Reports
- Audit trails on every report, PDF and Excel export, AI access to the data through MCP
- Engineering note
- Specific energy (kWh per m³) is calculated once air flow is measured
FAQ
Questions buyers ask us
How do you measure compressed air system efficiency?
Measure the electrical energy of the compressors and the volume of air delivered over the same period. Specific energy, in kWh per cubic metre, is the standard efficiency figure and shows the effect of staging, pressure and maintenance changes.
How much power does an unloaded compressor use?
A fixed-speed screw compressor running unloaded still draws a substantial fraction of its full-load power, depending on the model and control mode. Metering each compressor shows exactly how many unloaded hours your room runs.
Can energy monitoring find compressed air leaks?
It shows the size of the leak load. When production is stopped, the compressor power needed to hold pressure is mostly feeding leaks. Tracking that baseline shows whether leak repairs worked.
Can you read data from our compressor controllers?
Most current compressor controllers offer Modbus. Our gateway reads pressure, hours and alarms from them, and integrators set the register map from the cloud.
Want to know what your compressed air costs?
Tell us the compressors, their controllers and whether a flow meter is installed. We will propose the metering and the data to collect.