A major Asian airport chose EMQX to overcome data silos and achieve a real-time, unified view of its energy consumption. By implementing the cloud-edge solution powered by EMQX and NeuronEX, the airport unlocked a new level of efficiency, sustainability, and data-driven decision-making.
The Challenge: Unifying a Fragmented Energy Infrastructure
An energy management company, responsible for one of Asia's busiest airports, faced a critical challenge: integrating data from five major energy systems (water, electricity, gas, cooling, and heating). These systems, built at different times with diverse equipment and protocols, created fragmented data silos that hindered real-time analysis and decision-making.
The company needed to solve three key issues:
- Data Collection Complexity: Equipment from different vendors used incompatible communication protocols (e.g., ABB and Schneider). This inconsistency caused data loss and delays, making it nearly impossible to get a complete, real-time picture of energy usage.
- Massive Data Volume & Velocity: The sheer volume and speed of real-time energy data overwhelmed the company's existing relational databases, impacting processing speed and data accuracy.
- Operational Security: As energy data is critical to national security, the solution had to meet stringent standards for data security, privacy, and integrity.
The Solution: A Cloud-Edge Framework Powered by EMQX
To address these challenges, the company adopted a modern cloud-edge architecture, leveraging NeuronEX and EMQX Platform to build a single, unified energy management system.
- Standardized Edge Data Collection with NeuronEX: NeuronEX industrial edge gateway was deployed to the airport's various energy systems. It used its multi-protocol support to collect data from disparate equipment, including traditional mechanical meters. Data was then standardized and converted at the edge using SQL statements, ensuring uniform collection and consistent formatting before transmission to the cloud.
- Real-Time Cloud Aggregation with EMQX Platform: EMQX Platform served as the central nervous system in the cloud, aggregating real-time data from NeuronEX devices. As a unified MQTT platform, it provided a flexible and scalable architecture that seamlessly integrated with modern time-series and NoSQL databases, eliminating the performance bottlenecks of the old relational databases.
- Enhanced Data Processing & Management: With EMQX, the company could now process high-concurrency time-series data efficiently. This allowed them to focus on developing upper-level energy applications for deep analysis and insights. The solution's built-in data persistence and resource optimization capabilities also ensured compute-storage separation for enhanced scalability and flexibility.
The Results: A Sustainable and Data-Driven Future
- Real-Time Energy Monitoring: The new system provides real-time, unified monitoring of the entire airport's energy data, leading to a significant reduction in consumption and operational costs.
- Accurate Energy Forecasting: With a consolidated data foundation, the airport can now use big data analytics for accurate load forecasting. This enables precise, demand-based energy planning, optimizing supply and demand.
- Foundation for Sustainability: The solution lays the groundwork for future initiatives, including integrating renewable energy technologies like photovoltaic power. This commitment to green energy will help the airport reduce its reliance on traditional sources and drive high-quality development in the civil aviation sector.