Question 1

ION9000 Modbus Register Map

Accepted Answer

IssueRead Modbus registers from ION9000 meter Product lineION9000EnvironmentModbus testerION SetupResolution Attached to this article is the Modbus register map for ION9000How to read registers using generic Modbus tester, refer to FA180037

Question 2

Which SoMachine / EcoStruxure Machine Expert PLCs use the PLC Usb Driver?

Accepted Answer

IssueWhich SoMachine / EcoStruxure Machine Expert PLCs use the PLC Usb Driver?Product LineSoMachine v2, v3, up to v4.3EcoStruxure Machine ExpertEnvironmentWindows Driver for USB cable connection to Modicon PLC from SoMachineResolutionThe PLC USB Driver Suite is only used by the following SoMachine controllers (M258, LMC058, and ATV-IMC).For EcoStruxure Machine Expert, the Modicon M262 PLCs also use the PLC Usb Driver.When connected to those controllers via USB, they will appear up under "Modems" under the device manager and establish a 90.0.0.1 connection in the PLC-USB driver. M258, LMC058, ATV-IMC, M262 PLCs use the PLC USB driver and shows under Modems in the Device ManagerAs for other PLCs:The M238, M241 and M251 require the installation of a component called "GatewayOptionalDrivers" which contains the USB driver files needed for these PLCsThis is installed by SoMachine Configuration Manager in a Default installation of the software.In EcoStruxure Machine Expert, the GatewayOptionalDrivers component is also installed as part of a default installation from the "Schneider Electric Software Installer" Tool.M238, M241 and M251 families do not use the PLC USB driver and only shows under LibUsb-Win32 in the Windows Device Manager:

Question 3

What is Modbus and How does it work?

Accepted Answer

What is Modbus? Modbus is a serial communication protocol developed by Modicon published by Modicon® in 1979 for use with its programmable logic controllers (PLCs). In simple terms, it is a method used for transmitting information over serial lines between electronic devices. The device requesting the information is called the Modbus Client and the devices supplying information are Modbus Servers. In a standard Modbus network, there is one Client and up to 247 Servers, each with a unique Server Address from 1 to 247. The Client can also write information to the Servers.The official Modbus specification can be found at https://modbus.org/ What is it used for? Modbus is an open protocol, meaning that it's free for manufacturers to build into their equipment without having to pay royalties. It has become a standard communications protocol in industry, and is now the most commonly available means of connecting industrial electronic devices. It is used widely by many manufacturers throughout many industries. Modbus is typically used to transmit signals from instrumentation and control devices back to a main controller or data gathering system, for example a system that measures temperature and humidity and communicates the results to a computer. Modbus is often used to connect a supervisory computer with a remote terminal unit (RTU) in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Versions of the Modbus protocol exist for serial lines (Modbus RTU and Modbus ASCII) and for Ethernet (Modbus TCP). How does it work? Modbus is transmitted over serial lines between devices. The simplest setup would be a single serial cable connecting the serial ports on two devices, a Client and a Server. The data is sent as series of ones and zeroes called bits. Each bit is sent as a voltage. Zeroes are sent as positive voltages and a ones as negative. The bits are sent very quickly. A typical transmission speed is 9600 baud (bits per second). What is hexadecimal? When troubleshooting problems, it can be helpful to see the actual raw data being transmitted. Long strings of ones and zeroes are difficult to read, so the bits are combined and shown in hexadecimal. Each block of 4 bits is represented by one of the sixteen characters from 0 to F. Each block of 8 bits (called a byte) is represented by one of the 256 character pairs from 00 to FF. How is data stored in Standard Modbus? Information is stored in the Server device in four different tables. Two tables store on/off discrete values (coils) and two store numerical values (registers). The coils and registers each have a read-only table and read-write table. Each table has 9999 values. Each coil or contact is 1 bit and assigned a data address between 0000 and 270E. Each register is 1 word = 16 bits = 2 bytes and also has data address between 0000 and 270E. Coil/Register Numbers can be thought of as location names since they do not appear in the actual messages. The Data Addresses are used in the messages. For example, the first Holding Register, number 40001, has the Data Address 0000. The difference between these two values is the offset. Each table has a different offset. 1, 10001, 30001 and 40001. What is the Server ID? Each server in a network is assigned a unique unit address from 1 to 247. When the client requests data, the first byte it sends is the Server address. This way each server knows after the first byte whether or not to ignore the message. What is a function code? The second byte sent by the Client is the Function code. This number tells the server which table to access and whether to read from or write to the table. What is a CRC? CRC stands for Cyclic Redundancy check. It is two bytes added to the end of every modbus message for error detection. Every byte in the message is used to calculate the CRC. The receiving device also calculates the CRC and compares it to the CRC from the sending device. If even one bit in the message is received incorrectly, the CRCs will be different and an error will result. . What are the formats of Modbus commands and responses? What are data types? The example for FC03 shows that register 40108 contains AE41 which converts to the 16 bits 1010 1110 0100 0001 Great! But what does it mean? Well, it could mean a few things. Register 40108 could be defined as any of these 16-bit data types: A 16-bit unsigned integer (a whole number between 0 and 65535) register 40108 contains AE41 = 44,609 (hex to decimal conversion) A 16-bit signed integer (a whole number between -32768 and 32767) AE41 = -20,927 (hex to decimal conversion that wraps, if its over 32767 then subtract 65536) A two character ASCII string (2 typed letters) AE41 = ® A A discrete on/off value (this works the same as 16-bit integers with a value of 0 or 1. The hex data would be 0000 or 0001) Register 40108 could also be combined with40109 to form any of these 32-bit data types: A 32-bit unsigned integer (a number between 0 and 4,294,967,295) 40108,40109 = AE41 5652 = 2,923,517,522 A 32-bit signed integer (a number between -2,147,483,648 and 2,147,483,647) AE41 5652 = -1,371,449,774 A 32-bit double precision IEEE floating point number. This is a mathematical formula that allows any real number (a number with decimal points) to represented by 32 bits with an accuracy of about seven digits. AE41 5652 = -4.395978 E-11 Here is a spreadsheet IEEE float calculator for inputs of 4 bytes or 2 words. To download a copy, right click and select Save Target As... A four character ASCII string (4 typed letters) AE41 5652 = ® A V R More registers can be combined to form longer ASCII strings. Each register being used to store two ASCII characters (two bytes). What is byte and word ordering? The Modbus specification doesn't define exactly how the data is stored in the registers. Therefore, some manufacturers implemented modbus in their equipment to store and transmit the higher byte first followed by the lower byte. (AE before 41). Alternatively, others store and transmit the lower byte first (41 before AE). Similarly, when registers are combined to represent 32-bit data types, Some devices store the higher 16 bits (high word) in the first register and the remaining low word in the second (AE41 before 5652) while others do the opposite (5652 before AE41) It doesn't matter which order the bytes or words are sent in, as long as the receiving device knows which way to expect it. For example, if the number 29,235,175,522 was to be sent as a 32 bit unsigned integer, it could be arranged any of these four ways. AE41 5652 high byte first high word first 5652 AE41 high byte first low word first 41AE 5256 low byte first high word first 5256 41AE low byte first low word first What is a Modbus Map? A modbus map is simply a list for an individual server device that defines - what the data is (eg. pressure or temperature readings) - where the data is stored (which tables and data addresses) - how the data is stored (data types, byte and word ordering) Some devices are built with a fixed map that is defined by the manufacturer. While other devices allow the operator to configure or program a custom map to fit their needs. What is the difference between Modbus ASCII and Modbus RTU? Modbus RTU and Modbus ASCII talk the same protocol. The only difference is that the bytes being transmitted over the wire are presented as binary with RTU and as readable ASCII with Modbus RTU. important to note about RTU is that the RTU message does not have a Start_of_text indication. The receiving party in the communications uses a "silent" time in order to determine the start of a new message. ASCII does have a start-of-text token. Binary messages are shorter than ASCII and therefore theoretically faster to transmit/receive. You may be happy to see update rates of about 100 ms in your HMI/SCADA and could choose either communication.Summary:- use RTU is possible- use ASCII in case RTU is giving timeout problems on WinNT or when using slow communications media like 300 bps or dialup modems Most OPC Servers for Modbus support ASCII as well as RTU communications.. What are extended register addresses? Since the range of the analog output holding registers is 40001 to 49999, it implies that there cannot be more than 9999 registers. Although this is usually enough for most applications, there are cases where more registers would be beneficial. Registers 40001 to 49999 correspond to data addresses 0000 to 270E. If we utilize the remaining data addresses 270F to FFFF, over six times as many registers can be available, 65536 in total. This would correspond to register numbers from 40001 to 105536. Many modbus software drivers (for Client PCs) were written with the 40001 to 49999 limits and cannot access extended registers in server devices. And many server devices do not support maps using the extended registers. But on the other hand, some server devices do support these registers and some Client software can access it, especially if custom software is written. How does 2-byte server addressing work? Since a single byte is normally used to define the server address and each server on a network requires a unique address, the number of server on a network is limited to 256. The limit defined in the modbus specification is even lower at 247. To get beyond this limit, a modification can be made to the protocol to use two bytes for the address. The client and the servers would all be required to support this modification. Two byte addressing extends the limit on the number of servers in a network to 65535. By default, the Simply Modbus software uses 1 byte addressing. When an address greater than 255 is entered, the software automatically switches to 2 byte addressing and stays in this mode for all addresses until the 2 byte addressing is manually turned off. How can you send events and historical data? Enron Modbus includes commands for moving events and historical data.. What is Enron Modbus? Enron Modbus is a modification to the standard Modicon modbus communication protocol developed by Enron Corporation. See Enron Modbus for details.

Question 4

Network Requirements for APC SmartConnect portal.

Accepted Answer

If your SmartConnect-compatible UPS is installed in an enterprise location, additional network configuration may be required to allow your UPS to connect to Schneider Electric cloud services.NOTE: When connecting a UPS to Ecostruxure, it must be connected to the SmartConnect cloud portal so the network settings listed below are the same. The only difference is that you would not add the UPS to a SmartConnect account; you would add the UPS to Ecostruxure. IPv4 DHCP ServerA SmartConnect device requires an IPv4 DHCP server on its network to assign an IPv4 address to the device so it can connect to the Internet. Network MTUThe router and switch on the network of the SmartConnect device must support a Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size of 336 bytes at a minimum. Network Firewall and Proxy ServerTo connect to Schneider Electric cloud services, the UPS must connect directly to TCP port 443 on cece.prod.struxurewarecloud.com (20.121.83.246) and lwm2m.na.struxurewarecloud.com (52.179.127.30). If the UPS network is behind a proxy server (e.g., ZScaler), you must add a firewall rule that permits this connection to TCP port 443 and bypasses any proxy service packet inspection. The cipher listed below must be allowed.TLS_PSK_WITH_AES_128_CCM_8TLS_PSK_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256TLS_PSK_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA Consult with your Network Administrator to configure this firewall rule. Network Switch Port SpeedSmartConnect-compatible UPS devices only support 10/100 Mbps port speed. If you are using a 1Gb network switch, and the port is not set to auto-configure its speed, this can prevent the device from connecting to Schneider Electric cloud services.

Question 5

Troubleshooting "Application is incompatible with this AOS" messages on a Network Management Card

Accepted Answer

Issue:When logging into the web interface of a Network Management Card (NMC), the user is presented with an error message that the "Application is incompatible with this APC AOS"Product:All products that use a standalone or embedded NMC, including but not limited to UPS, Rack PDU, and ATS systems. Environment:All firmware and serial rangesSolution:An incompatible AOS error message can be caused by a number of factors, including but not limited to: An incorrect application image being loaded onto the NMCA failed or partial firmware upgradeFirmware not fully loading on a device Users may be able to login to the CLI, and could potentially see the following for NMC status:Where "A!" means there is an issue with the firmware application on the NMC. To resolve this, users should first try and reflash with the latest firmware version they have access to. If that does not resolve the problem, the next step would be to format the NMC by holding down the NMC pin reset button for 30 seconds (this will wipe all configuration from the card), and if the card is still inaccessible or unable to be given an IP address then upgrade the NMC using the "bootmonitor" method outlined in this article: Video: Using Network Management Card 2 (NMC2) bootmonitor to recover/upgrade firmware

Question 6

What is the expected life of my APC UPS VRLA battery?

Accepted Answer

Issue:What is the expected life of my APC UPS VRLA Battery?Product Line:All UPS ModelsEnvironment: All Three Phase and Single Phase UPS Models Cause / Resolution:Most APC batteries should last three to five years. There are many factors which affect Battery life including environment and number of discharges. Below are some guidelines to ensure optimum life expectancy: 1. Operating Temperature: The optimal operating temperature for a lead‑acid battery is 20–25°C (68–77°F). Operating at higher temperatures significantly reduces battery lifespan. As a general rule, every 8°C (15°F) increase in temperature will cut the battery’s life in half. For example, a battery expected to last 4 years at 25°C (77°F) would only last about 2 years if operated at 33°C (95°F). Keep in mind that the internal battery temperature of a UPS is always higher than the ambient room temperature. Because of this, it is strongly recommended to install the UPS in a location with good airflow, proper ventilation, and adequate cooling to help maximize battery life. 2. Battery Calibration and Deep Discharge: You should perform runtime calibrations on your UPS only once or twice per year, and only if truly necessary. While some customers run calibrations to verify that their available runtime is sufficient, performing these tests too frequently can significantly shorten the lifespan of the APC battery. It is also important to remember that a UPS is not designed for frequent deep‑discharge cycles. We do not recommend using an APC Smart‑UPS or Back‑UPS as a portable power source that is repeatedly discharged and recharged (for example, when mounted on a mobile equipment cart). These units are specifically engineered for emergency backup power during unexpected outages or brief power interruptions—not for continuous cycling like a portable battery pack. 3. Storage: APC batteries should not be stored for extended periods of time. New batteries or UPS units should be stored for no longer than 6 months from the date of purchase, as they leave the factory at approximately 80% charge. After this period, the battery should be placed into use; otherwise, it will lose a significant portion of its charge. It is also not recommended to store batteries that have already been in use. Long‑term storage without periodic recharging can lead to reduced lifespan and unpredictable performance. Temperature and Storage Recommendations Storage temperature has a major impact on how quickly a battery degrades while not in use: –15°C to +30°C (5°F to 86°F):Perform a full recharge cycle at least every 6 months. +30°C to +45°C (86°F to 113°F):Perform a full recharge cycle at least every 3 months. Proper storage temperature and periodic recharging are essential to preserving battery health and ensuring reliable performance when the UPS is finally placed into service. 4. Load: As the load on your UPS increases, the available runtime decreases. For best performance and battery longevity, it is recommended not to exceed 80% of the UPS’s rated capacity. If a power outage occurs while the UPS is operating at or near full load, the battery will discharge much more quickly, reducing the amount of backup time available. Frequent heavy loads and rapid discharges can also significantly shorten the battery’s overall life expectancy. 5. Battery chemical reaction: As a VRLA (AGM) battery ages, it undergoes a chemical process known as sulfation. This occurs when lead sulfate crystals harden on the battery plates, reducing the battery’s ability to charge and discharge efficiently. This can lead to several noticeable effects: Longer charging times than normalExcessive heat buildup, which can eventually cause electrolyte “boil‑out”Shorter runtimes between chargesSignificantly reduced overall battery life 6. Battery replacement: Since the typical end‑of‑life for VRLA batteries is approximately five (5) years, it is strongly recommended to replace the UPS battery before reaching this age. Doing so helps prevent performance degradation and reduces the risk of possible hydrogen sulfide gas emission, which can occur when aging batteries begin to fail. 7. Firmware Improvements: For selected single‑phase Smart‑UPS models, it is recommended to update the UPS firmware to the latest available version. This ensures the unit benefits from all battery‑related enhancements, stability improvements, and performance optimizations provided by APC. For instructions and compatibility details, refer to FA164737, which outlines the process for updating firmware on supported single‑phase Smart‑UPS units. If you have any clarifications, please feel free to contact us at 1-800-800-4272 or chat with our technical support representatives.

Question 7

Where to download the latest version of WSOS5?

Accepted Answer

Issue Requires to configuration software (WSOS) for N, U, W, RL Series Reclosers and ADVC (FlexVue & SetVue) controllers. Product Line Windows Switchgear Operating System (WSOS)Schneider Electric Reclosers (N, U, W, RL Series)ADVC Controllers (FlexVue & SetVue)Cause Configuration software used to control, configure and access all switchgear data either locally or remotely. May be used to configure switchgear settings, view event log, customize the operator interface and analyze/report data using the Power Quality Analysis Tools. Resolution Click here to download the latest version of WSOS 5.

Question 8

PowerLogic PM5000 Series (PM51xx, PM53xx, PM55xx, PM56xx) Modbus Register List

Accepted Answer

IssueRegister list for Modbus communication Product LinePM5110, PM5330, PM5340, PM5560, PM5563, PM56xx, PM57xx EnvironmentPower Meter Communications Modbus Register List CausePM5000 series register list is needed for Modbus communication ResolutionSee the attached documents for Register List. There are 2 files. One for the PM5100 and PM5300 series and the other file is for the PM5500, PM5600, and the PM5700 series.

Question 9

What is the selection criterion of Circuit Breakers for the Capacitor bank application.

Accepted Answer

The selection should be done after derating the Circuit Breaker taking into consideration voltage variation and capacitors tolerances that could increase nominal current up to 1.5In. The Derating factor of 1.5In Where In = Q/ ( Square root of 3 ) Un Q = Capacitor Power Un = Nominal Voltage Choose the Micrologic with delay time selection, so that the Circuit Breaker does not trip due to initial high inrush current. Also to be taken into account are the parameters like supply frequency, operating voltage & harmonics level of the power system for such application. Refer the attached sheet for further details for selection of Circuit Breaker for Capacitor duty application. Note: Use the phase barrier between the phases in Circuit Breaker to prevent flashover due to heavy inrush current.

Question 10

Why is Neutral and Earth (Ground) Connection forbidden Downstream from Main Panel?

Accepted Answer

The question is often asked what is the maximum voltage permitted between the Neutral and Earth (Ground) conductor and if the Neutral and Earth can be bridged to achieve a zero value.This can be a difficult topic, in fact in many cases it can be dangerous. As you will see from the attached document, there are many reasons why it is not allowed.

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