Generator Monitoring and AQMD Reporting

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

In 2016 the Generator Monitoring and AQMD Reporting Project moved the County of San Bernardino from using paper logs to track and report generator run times to an electronic model. The new model took advantage of cellular and GPS technology that allowed the County to monitor generator statuses and record test and outage run times at our sites electronically. The County worked with Ayantra to develop a monitoring and reporting scheme for our generator fleet by utilizing their wireless and web telemetry product. This has given the County the ability to monitor generator statuses at remote locations as well as report on generator test and outage run times to meet Air Quality Management District (AQMD) requirements. This system creates an electronic audit trail by allowing the County to store its generator data in the Ayantra cloud and locally on site. With this data, we are then able to create and email monthly AQMD compliance reports in a PDF format to County staff and post them on our SharePoint site for future reference as well as provide them on demand to AQMD. The strategy and subsequent achievement of the project was to leverage technologies to create an automated system for generator monitoring and reporting which would eliminate paper logs and the difficult task of reconciling the type of run time (i.e. outage or test) for AQMD compliance. The County also wanted to take advantage of utilizing current software licensing and hardware that we owned. The goal was to provide a system that was automated, reduced trips to generator sites, meet our compliance requirements for reporting, and reduce our exposure to expensive fines for non-compliance by going over our permitted run time hours.