”SkyPower” – A Web Based Energy Management Information System for Tea Industry With an Android Application for Mobile Devices.

Abstract

The tea plantation industry is a one of major business in Sri Lanka and famed for producing the finest black tea in the world. Black tea production heavily consumes various kinds of energy during its processing stages. In black tea processing, thermal energy is used to generate hot air for the drying and withering processes. The widely use fuel source is firewood for generate the thermal energy. The availability of quality firewood in right quantities is a critical factor for produce finest black tea in timely manner. Firewood is scarce most of the time. As a result, the price of firewood increases when increasing the market demand. The cost of thermal and electrical energy is about 30% of the total cost of tea processing. Cost of energy is increasing with fuel prices and electricity charges. As a norm, the cost of energy increasing by 5% for a year. Therefore energy usage observing mechanism and wastage mitigation system is becomes a critical requirement of the industry and the country. Energy usage and wastage monitoring basically focused on mitigate unnecessary usage and avoid wastage. This encourages using energy in sustainable way in order to archive the maximum productivity. The basic intention of the project is reduce the cost of production and hence encourage to using the energy sources in effective and productive manner. Indirectly it encourages protecting environment by reducing carbon dioxide emission from various energy sources and guiding to sustainable usage of energy. The "SkyPower" system is a web based energy management information system which is providing comprehensive services to record and monitor energy usage and hence providing support to take effective management decisions. The proposed system is integrated with Android Application in order to provide easy access through the mobile devices. Other than this, the system provided varies associated and value added services to end users in order to perform there day today works in the factory. The system helps to take management decisions and make estimations by producing comprehensive reports and details to the management. Finally proposed system helps to mitigate corruptions and fraud within process of tea production. The "SkyPower" system will be the Sri Lanka’s very first web based energy management information system in the tea plantation sector.