Engineered Systems - September 2008 - (Page 81)

As the burden of building data gets heavier, strategies for managing it take to the sky, so to speak. Whether it’s sorting your services smartly or learning to use SCADA or OPC, modern building automation aims to help you succeed by keeping your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground. BY KEN SINCLAIR s the convergence communities reinvent the BAS industry, our mission becomes critical. Convergence is changing everything for everyone by leading us down the same data paths while using our data as it has never been used before. In breaking down our past technology silos, our businesses get exposed and what were mandatory requirements for one industry have now become mandatory for all in the data chain. Although BAS have not yet completely reached the total category of mission critical, these systems inch daily toward that end as new money drives buildings to become an active part of the national electrical grid through DR and GridWise thinking. We can consider BAS, which traditionally resided on the ground, as now taking flight as data becomes part of the information clouds of the enterprise and beyond. Silos of building automation technologies fall daily, while data rises into the communication clouds. As this BAS data is used in ways we never imagined, we must ask what mission critical means, as our mission has clearly changed. BAS IS FLYING HIGH Toby Considine, a systems specialist, facility services with the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), recently wrote on the subject in his column titled, “Clouds and Rain,” in the August issue of AutomatedBuildings.com: “I think this is right. For buildings, only the core processes (those elements on the traditional low-voltage protocols such as BACnet and LON) are on the ground. “Enterprise energy monitoring and building control, then, are in the low-lying cumulus clouds. A well-architected system does not put the EMCS center in the center of any control loops. TCP/IP is, A by design, a non-deterministic protocol, meaning it does not belong inside a control loop. Anything off the ground is in the clouds. Anything in the clouds should interact using internet protocols. “In the UNC enterprise building management (EBMS) project, we restrict all low-level controls to the building. All communications outside the building are using internet protocols. Each building has its enterprise building local gateway (EBLG) speaking traditional standards and proprietary protocols on the building side, and Web services on the outside. We keep the EBMS close to the buildings as a business decision, but there is nothing on the architecture that would prevent us from moving this service up into the higher-up stratus cloud layer, or even up into the high-flying cirrus layer. “The middle tier of stratus clouds is outside facilities operations and hosted in the wider enterprise. We plan for the Registrar’s Office, in the stratus cloud, to submit room schedules and head counts for every classroom down to the buildings. For now, this communication will have to be with the cumulus layer, but we would like to push it down to the ground at the building gateway. “We have long used building analytics products like Packrat at UNC, bolted onto the silo. It would be far better for these services to live in the cirrus clouds, under the direct control of someone with the in-house expertise to process the data into information. The processing necessary to turn operating data into predictive maintenance workorders is intense, but only needed sporadically. The whole purpose of cloud computing is to reduce costs by sharing expertise and resources so they are fully utilized. Building analytics should move up into the highest clouds, with the highest expertise. “The remotest services all belong in the cirrus clouds: DR, energy markets, third-party maintenance, all are cirrus-tier cloud services. w w w. esmag a zine . c o m 81 http://AutomatedBuildings.com http://www.esmagazine.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Engineered Systems - September 2008

Engineered Systems - September 2008 Contents Editor's Note HVAC Challenge Back2Basics Case In Point Commissioning Building Automation HVACR Designer Tips Application Checklist LEED®, Or Get (It) Out Of The Way? BACnet Supplement Race To Market Steam Humidification In Pharmaceutical Facilities Outside Air, Inside Data Centers Forecast: Increasingly Cloudy And Under Control Products Computers & Software Literature Glossary Classifieds Advertiser Index Tomorrow's Environment

Engineered Systems - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.