HVAC Control in the New Millennium.pdf - HVAC.Amickracing

Building Automation, Wireless Technology and the InternetIn today’s energy management climate, increasing costs and theneed for improved efficiency of building systems forces owners to takea hard look at their building automation systems. Many industries mustcomply with new environmental and safety requirements.In such a business environment, less of the required data are controlspecific. More information of other types is needed to maintain,diagnose and modify the control system.Standard digital networks have additional benefits. Reduced wiringlowers installation and maintenance costs. Open systems let usersselect the right equipment for the job, regardless of the system manufacturer.The networks also have intelligent instrumentation, in which betterperforming devices provide functions such as advanced diagnostics.The networks offer distributed control with intelligent devices thatprovide the flexibility to apply control centrally or at local processingpoints for improved performance and reliability.The available range from low-level systems that gather data fromsimple discrete sensors to more sophisticated networks in which intelligentfield devices implement distributed control.Web TechnologiesImproved energy management means a tighter integration of theentire facility. Information integration at this level requires the ability tolink systems of different types, providing information in various formatsthroughout the facility and often with geographically dispersed plantsand offices. Until recently, this has been a difficult and costly problem,but the increasing use of technologies that have matured on the Internetprovides some cost-effective solutions. The Internet has successfullyunified a variety of computers, including mainframes, midranges, workstations,and PCs. In many businesses, the move toward electronic commercemeans standardizing around Internet technologies, includingEthernet, TCP/IP, and the Web. These technologies are used to track notonly their facility but also the status of suppliers including energy suppliers.A tight integration in some areas means that the state-of-the-art isadvancing to the point where this level of integration will be a commodity,more like a standard software package than the research project itseems like today. Improved energy management presents many of the©2001 by The Fairmont Press, Inc. All rights reserved.