How to Find Electrical Faults Before They Happen.

I'm here in Italy to track down a mysterious device that can identify electrical faults before they even happen in previous videos from Italy it surprised viewers that the power supply to apartment such as we have in a street like this could be as little as three or 6 kilow the power absolutely everything and we can see that playing out the electrical distribution system is running alongside the building and it's tapped off that causes a few challenges so let's dive into one of the apartments an

d find out more so here's the electricity meter for the apartment and underneath is a circuit breaker rated at 25 amps which gives us a power supply of around about 6 KW rating if you exceed that the worst case is of this could trip off which could be a bit of a problem because the apartment is a long way up these stairs just pause for a moment here halfway up there to Marvel at the previous generation of wiring which appears to be a little look like twin and Earth with a nail put through it thi

ngs certainly moved on here so here we are in the apartment itself a long way up those stairs we've got the consumer unit or distribution B proudly on display in the kitchen for a very good reason open this up we can see we've got our incoming rcd and two circuits got one for the lighting rated at 10 amps and another one for the power rated at 16 amps and everything in this apartment by the lights is on that one circuit break so just look around us in the kitchen here we've got a fridge we've go

t a hot plate we've got a washing machine we've got an electric kettle got the ever popular air fryer we've got air conditioning units we've even got a water boiler as well so the big problem here which unsuspecting tourists soon find out if you start using combinations of these high current draw appliances together this trips out which can be a little bit challenge but possibly a reflection of how we'll have to live in the future and we'll we'll come back to that of course a little bit of incon

venience and resetting a circuit breaker now and again is just one of the prices to pay to live in such a fantastic country but if you're visiting from overseas this can come as a bit of a surprise especially if you're renting an apartment like this one so let's go on site and meet up with Massimo Valentini to find out how he uses this device to identify and solve electrical problems so mimo you've been using the pry cam to monitor this property cuz you rent it as AOL this property and 30 other

ones and we decided more than a year ago to start deploying Pam in all our vas I'll explain you the reason why so basically from the from the app pram home we can see all all the vas that features this currently we are only using in single phas Villas but we plan to to implement Al also in free face Villas so here this is Villa soliva where we are now and the pyam helped me in different ways so I'll go through the features and tell why is that feature important for me for this Villa there are fo

ur five sections of course we can monitor the consumptions daily in real time and what is nice is that here we can also see the production of the of the photovolt system because we see the net consumption which is now negative okay so we're exporting power exactly we are injecting power into the network then there is the quality of the grid so voltage and uh and frequency daily real time and weekly and monthly that's very important because all our vas are remote areas and we are subject to very

deep voltage drop sometimes down to 200 volts instead of 230 wow so sometimes it can be critical and in in in some cases we it the pram helps us to identify that that was the cause of other problems for example problems with air conditioning units or or coffee machines it was related with voltage drop okay so if it get to a la some of this equipment won't start exactly yes and then obviously you get a complaint from someone exactly and we had to monitor this and we discover what the problem was

and we could talk with utility and see what they could do then that's the security part from my point of view is my favorite honestly because in I can monitor in real time the current ground that's very important of course the house is protected there is a normally for example in this case there is a differential circuit breaker with 30 amps limit yes 30 milliamps yeah milliamps 30 milliamps but doesn't mean that normally it's zero so there is always some ground current to ground and in this way

we can prevent things to happen for example if we know that every time the pull pump turn on or every time the external light turn on ground can will increase in case we get for example the external lights line switch off then we can see if that was a problem if it was related with the ground so there is probably some water into a light okay or with a pool pump it help us to understand that the pool pump needed some maintenance or rewinding even because there was the ground current that was too

high compared to the normal value that you get when the pool pump turn on Okay so can you set an alert if it goes above certain limits Yes Yes actually yes there is an alert related to the in this case to 30 milliamps and we get a notification the pool pumps are staying all year or part of the Year part of the year in a very wet in very humid environment they get rusty very easily this the the leak carrent over the year start increasing significantly and uh having this trend is very important t

o say okay was the pool pump working like this one year ago two years ago this is something that will help us to maintain the pull pump in in better shape every time there is a a load that is unsafe because the current is getting too close so we still don't get the trip but it's getting too close then we get a notification and we can investigate and the fact that we it's measured in real time is that we can come here turn everything off and then as soon as we start on we we turn on every single

switch we can see what the impact in terms of ground current okay so you can use it for fault finding exactly to isolate the problem circuit so it helps us to prevent failures but also to identify what the problem is yeah and honestly in ey season that's very important be quick and understanding what the problem sometimes without even a technician we can identify which line is creating the the problem and then turn it off keep it off especially when it comes to outdoor light light system which i

s massive is that where you tend to find outdoor lighting system is the cause of the the problem yes obviously when rain and the exactly maybe the problem only happens when it rains and in I season it's rain when it rains the list here P it RS for few hours but very strongly so we might have problem for a few hours and then after three days the problem disappear and you can see all of this remotely from the app yes then the ground system ground resistance is measured in real time and we can see

the trend the daily weekly and monthly and that's interesting to see that the the ground system is properly working actually if the ground system was disconnected from any any reasons like a mouse or any kind any other problem we would see this and get a notification okay so that's measuring the resistance of all of the earth electrodes around the property something different for us cuz in the UK where normally the Earth system is provided by the distributor so we don't normally worry about that

as much but that's a clever function IF function is called brain here here it's an algorithm that help us to understand how loads are distributed I mean how the total consumption is split between they call it here standby loads High loads and other loads so standby loads are those that are consuming less than I think one one or 1.5 kilowatt which is very important because that's something that we can optimizing yeah because they're working all day long there are things that we can easily optimi

ze with Energy Efficiency components so while for example a dishwasher will be a high load but only work for a few hours this one will work for all day long okay so it's all those small appliances are just draw tiny amounts of power exactly but in aggregate with all on it actually adds up to quite a big number yes yeah so this is then there are other two things that we use for but I admit that it can be done in different ways by connecting to the V we know if the The Villa is energized because t

here is no other way at the moment we get a notification that that means trip especially in Winter where we don't come here often we come here every month something simil getting a notification that the whe is the energize is important to know and we can do it when we try to connect we can see the the voltage level is zero or alternatively also the wfi we can monitor if the Wi-Fi connection is lost for for a couple of days it means that the UPS also off and we need to come here and turn it off P

am connects to the Wi-Fi network but then I thought if it trips you'll lose the Wi-Fi no we still have the UPS we have UPS energizing a set of things like Wi-Fi and video surveillance and alarm so we still have many other hours of operation of those loads yes so sometimes we might have no electricity and still Wi-Fi after a couple of days we have no electricity no Wi-fi then it's becomes us to come and turn everything on okay but youd still all of the parameters are stored in the memory of the d

evice yes we can see the the average ground current in this case is around 80 milliamps so we are not that far from 30 but then the operation can help the house owner without technical knowledge that's what that's important yeah and you can get all this remotely anyway you can set which notification you want to get so one may be more interesting on consumption for instance in our case really is mainly related to the safety and prevention of things like technical issues like with external lights

or pool pump or air condition that make problems to the guest yeah the last thing people want to do is come on holiday and try try resetting switches so we got the meter oh looks like a circuit break as well but then the electrician puts this in and this this is essentially the rating for the property 40 amps if the power goes off in the house someone has to come down here in the middle of the night and reset that switch yes yeah doesn't really happen because the the in case of grand fault the o

ther one will trip yeah in case of overload the other one will trip first than this okay before than this but the pry cam sits between this switch and the main switch in that configuration okay that's good it's fascinating to see how mimo's deployed the pry cam to manage power remotely and identify potential problems before they impact on the guest experience and perhaps this is something we need to be looking for in the future because we get used to it you know we have in the UK 23 kilowatt Sup

ply in America you might have 48 Kow and we're probably never having to reset mcbs we cies overloaded the entire power supply for the property however the where we use power is changing as we go for more electrification more heat pumps more EV charging more solar on the grid we're all going to have to get used to more flexibility and understanding at a granular level how we use power and when we use power and I think systems like the pry cam could very much be part of that equation if you want t

o see another electrical installation in Italy that steps up a level going to three phase check out the video on screen now and in that video we'll also discuss a little bit more about load shedding