Twenty years of monitoring and control of electricity consumption in RTB Bor, Serbia Viša Tasić*, Vladimir Despotović**, Darko Brodić**, Marijana Pavlov*, Dragan R. Milivojević* * Mining and Metallurgy Institute, Bor, Serbia ** University of Belgrade, Technical Faculty in Bor, Bor, Serbia e-mail: visa.tasic@irmbor.co.rs Abstract - This paper presents a historical overview of development and application of a distributed system for monitoring and control of electrical energy consumption in the Copper Mining and Smelting Complex Bor (RTB), which is one of the greatest consumers of electrical energy in the Republic of Serbia. Realization of the real time monitoring and control system started in early 1990s. The main characteristics and performances of three generations of the system are described in this paper. I. INTRODUCTION Tracking electrical energy consumption in real time is one of the most important issues for companies those are large power consumers in order to control energy usage and avoid peak pricing. Monitoring system that collects data about active and reactive power and energy makes it easier for companies to detect potential power concerns. This enables the reduction of energy consumption per unit of production and makes it more predictable. The overall electrical energy costs consist of two main components: the energy costs and the power costs. The power costs imply the peak load, which is the maximum average power load over a designated interval of time (15 minutes) during one month. It is apparent that, under certain circumstances, 15 minutes of unusually high- energy import resulting from concurrent start-up of power consumers may drastically increase power costs for an entire month. This can be often avoided with only a minimal technical effort. Peak load costs can be significantly reduced by just a few short, targeted interventions at the right point in time. Potential savings in this area remain unexploited by many companies. This short-term redistribution of imported energy is usually executed automatically using optimization systems for peak load [1]. The Copper Mining and Smelting Complex Bor (RTB) is one of the largest electric energy consumers in the Republic of Serbia. The consumption in its production plants (mines, flotation, smelter and refining plants) is over 50 GWh per month, which amounts approximately 2000000 EUR/month. Only modest savings in electrical energy consumption can lead to substantial cost savings. This is achieved using the monitoring and control system designed and implemented in RTB in early 1990s [2]. The system is constantly upgraded and improved until nowadays, both in terms of hardware devices and software support. Because of the complexity, a large number of transformer stations and their spatial dislocation (over 80 km), system includes only main transformer substations. This paper gives a historical overview of three generations of the system for monitoring and control of electrical energy consumption. The first two generations were designed only for monitoring, whereas the latest generation has a control possibility for peak load reduction. II. THE FIRST GENERATION (1990-1996) The first generation of the system for monitoring and control of electrical energy consumption in RTB Bor was designed and implemented at the beginning of 1990 [2]. The implemented system had the following structure (as shown in Figure 1):  Distributed measuring stations (MS) installed at each transformer station,  Data's concentrators and remote workstations (RWS) installed at Control Centers in Bor and Majdanpek,  Host computers installed at Computer Centers in Bor (ICL 2958D) and Majdanpek (ICL ME29). Figure 1. The configuration diagram of monitoring system 1134 MIPRO 2013/CTS