Richard Winter, Director at matt:e, provides us with the latest updates around the development of the flagship Guardian device.
Q. Regular readers will recognise that the Guardian device won a PE ‘Top Product’ award at the end of last year. Give us a refresher on the device and what it’s designed to do.
The Guardian is a power and protective conductor monitoring device which is designed to monitor the electrical supply to, and the wiring infrastructure of, the building into which it is installed.
It can detect faults such as high and low line voltages, loss of Neutral, broken PEN conductors, and stray voltages on any bonded service and structure such as gas pipe work, earth rods and metal fences etc.
The device can be used for monitoring only but can also isolate loads, if required. It can also connect to its own portal where the user can view the site remotely. From here alerts can be sent to the user via SMS and email.
Q. How has the general interest in the product been since launch and are you seeing an uptake in its installation and use?
All new technology takes time to build, however the feedback on the device has been extremely encouraging, as most electricians are aware of the dangers and damage caused by broken Neutral events.
We’re seeing the device being specified into projects and have had huge interest from FM companies along with the telecoms industry, rail, data centres and EV chargepoint installations, to name a few. We’ve now launched the product globally and have lots of interest from the USA, Australia and Norway. It seems that broken Neutrals really are an issue all around the world.
Q. Are there any projects or jobs where it has been a particular success so far?
Outside the standard EV protection installations there have been some very interesting enquiries about different uses for the device, including one from a marina where they’re looking to use the Guardian to monitor for stray voltages on metal work that may be coming from the vessels in the water.
Q. Have you made any tweaks to the design or applications based on end user feedback?
We’re constantly looking at ways to improve all products and have already made some tweaks to the way the device displays some of the faults to make it easier for the electrician to diagnose.
Fortunately the firmware can be updated over the air so all product, if connected to the portal, will benefit from the ongoing developments to the firmware.
Additionally, we’ve also designed a pre-wired enclosure to make the product simple to retrofit so it’s now available in this version as well as a standard panel mounted meter.
Q. Are there plans to develop the Guardian further in future, and if so, what will this potentially mean in terms of functionality?
Further updates to the firmware are planned in the next few months that will improve the functionality of the device, including the ability to remotely isolate loads and calculating and alerting of phase imbalance.
This could be down to distribution boards having a heavily loaded phase (perhaps lots of large single phase loads, such as heaters), so by monitoring and alerting the user this could help prevent excessive wear on three-phase motors and help reduce energy consumption.
The Guardian technology is currently being built into a portable test meter whereby electricians can test for stray voltages on conductive items that are not bonded but may become inadvertently live.
Visit the matt:e Guardian product information page here
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