Multi-functional load monitoring relay

Siemens has just launched its Sir­ius 3UG546 DC load mon­i­tor­ing relay on the mar­ket. The new device is the most com­pact of its kind for direct cur­rent (DC) appli­ca­tions, enabling sim­ple and pre­cise pow­er mea­sure­ment. The Sir­ius 3UG546 is unique in our indus­try: It is the first and only DC load mon­i­tor­ing relay to com­bine cur­rent and volt­age mea­sure­ment, pow­er mon­i­tor­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and var­i­ous oth­er use­ful func­tions in one sin­gle, com­pact device. Until now, sev­er­al indi­vid­ual com­po­nents were required for each of these func­tions. The inno­v­a­tive new approach saves space and costs.

Sir­ius 3UG546 DC load mon­i­tor­ing relay is sim­ply ide­al for mon­i­tor­ing indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions, and espe­cial­ly bat­tery-based appli­ca­tions. In sin­gle- or dual-chan­nel mode, the devices mon­i­tor the direct cur­rent (DC load cir­cuit), the volt­age lev­el and the actu­al pow­er, and issue a warn­ing if one of these val­ues is above or below the lim­its defined.

The DC load mon­i­tor­ing relay fea­tures a large oper­at­ing volt­age range from 0 to 800 V. The fol­low­ing two cur­rent vari­ants are avail­able: 22.5 mm over­all width: 2x8 A / 1x16 A; 45 mm over­all width: up to 63 A.

The load mon­i­tor­ing relay comes with sep­a­rate coun­ters for ener­gy con­sump­tion and ener­gy recov­ery. Oper­at­ing hour and switch­ing cycle coun­ters enable pre­ven­tive main­te­nance. The switch­ing cycle counter is incre­ment­ed by one with every detect­ed switch-off of the mon­i­tored load, and the oper­at­ing hour counter indi­cates the time peri­od dur­ing which a mea­sur­able cur­rent exists. The num­ber of switch­ing cycles and oper­at­ing hours serves as an indi­ca­tor as to whether main­te­nance or the replace­ment of switch­ing ele­ments, machine parts and plant sec­tions is required.

The devices can be inte­grat­ed into the TIA Por­tal and all the rel­e­vant para­me­ters can be param­e­trized via Profinet. Mea­sured and counter val­ues as well as diag­nos­tic mes­sages are trans­mit­ted to a con­troller via Profinet. To enable fast respons­es to faults detect­ed in the plant, the inter­nal relay serves as a sig­nal out­put and trips as soon as a val­ue exceeds or falls below a defined lim­it. In addi­tion, all the counter and mea­sured val­ues mon­i­tored can be pro­vid­ed with a warn­ing lim­it which gen­er­ates a warn­ing via Profinet when­ev­er a lim­it vio­la­tion occurs. How­ev­er, oper­a­tion – includ­ing fault response – is also pos­si­ble with­out Profinet.

The Sir­ius 3UG546 DC load mon­i­tor­ing relay offers high user friend­li­ness and sim­pli­fied use. No expert knowl­edge is required for com­mis­sion­ing or data pro­cess­ing. The new device is ide­al for use in var­i­ous indus­tries, includ­ing: auto­mo­tive (DC cur­rent mon­i­tor­ing in auto­mo­tive pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties), robot­ics (mon­i­tor­ing and ener­gy recov­ery for robot-inte­grat­ed process­es), e‑Mobility (mon­i­tor­ing the ener­gy sup­plied, deep dis­charg­ing pro­tec­tion for EV charg­ing), DC ener­gy stor­age, con­trol cab­i­net man­u­fac­ture (DC cur­rent mon­i­tor­ing in the con­trol cab­i­net or in the manufacturing/process units), light­ing, and also in autonomous­ly guid­ed vehi­cles which auto­mat­i­cal­ly approach charg­ing sta­tions to charge their batteries.