Small wind / Buyer questions
Application integration
Should sensor warm-up energy count as valid monitoring service immediately after restart?
The short answer
Not automatically. A sensor can draw power before its measurements meet the maker's readiness conditions. Startup energy remains consumption, but the corresponding records may need an explicit not-ready flag. Repeated power cycling can therefore reduce valid observations even when a simple watts-times-runtime calculation predicts an attractive energy saving.
Identify the instrument-specific readiness condition
Obtain the selected sensor's startup, stabilization and valid-output description, including any diagnostic flag or status value. Vaisala gives product-specific startup and operating-state information; another instrument can differ. Do not apply one sensor's delay to every channel or assume a number appearing on the display is already an accepted measurement.
Keep powered time and valid time separate
Hypothetically, an instrument powered for ten minutes but requiring two assumed not-ready minutes provides at most eight minutes of valid observations in that simplified case. Its electrical budget still includes all ten powered minutes and any startup demand. These invented durations are not instrument instructions. If records are held at a previous value during a state change, do not silently label them new measurements.
Retain the readiness flag or supported state with each observation. Deleting not-ready records from a dataset must not also erase their elapsed time and consumed energy from the service comparison.
Compare complete sampling service
Ask the station owner how many accepted observations are required and which gaps are tolerable. Evaluate the approved power-cycling option against continuous operation using valid records, not just lower kWh. Include the source needed to finish mandatory warm-up and observation windows when wind contribution changes. The enquiry should state readiness evidence and the actual input profile. This page does not provide a calibration or instrument startup procedure, and a MARSTON wind package does not establish sensor accuracy, data-validity logic or guaranteed continuous measurements.
Sources
Examples are illustrative. Confirm product-specific performance, compatibility and supply scope in the applicable documents.