Assessment of Energy Consumption for Safety-Related PLC-Based Systems

The paper describes an approach to measure energy consumption of programmable components (MCU, FPGA etc.) which are a core of Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). Investigation of energy consumption dependence from a type of programmable components as well as from features of software gives a road map for implementation of energy efficiency measures to make PLCs “greener”. Special toolset named GreenCo Controller has been designed, implemented and tested for the above research. A designed architecture includes the following components: a commercially available motherboard (Arduino UNO) programmed with software to perform data processing in respect to energy consumption measurement of the target board-shield (GreenCo board); GreenCo board on the base of Microchip dsPIC30F3011 MCU programmed with different type of application software as a subject of energy consumption investigation; a software monitor for PC desktop using named GreenCo Controller GUI. “Green” features of PLC are analyzed after that formal optimization problems in accordance with criterion “energy consumption level/safety level” have been stated. Such problems can be solved with dynamic programming method. Concept and design of GreenCo Controller are described. Areas of future researches with GreenCo Controller are proposed as a conclusion.