When engineers and other professionals hear someone speaking about the ‘cloud’ and its potential impact on both industry and the wider world, they tend to nod knowingly in an attempt to disguise the fact that, to many people, the cloud remains somewhat of a mystery. Kees van Grieken, Chief Technology Officer at Priva NL, explains all…
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o understand fully where the demand for cloud-based solutions is coming from – at least pertaining to building controls and energy – the city of the future must first be visualised. It’s currently estimated that around 180,000 people per day are moving to urban areas, every day, worldwide (1). As a result, Governments are seeking to deliver smart, sustainable cities through projects such as the EC’s European Initiative on Smart Cities, which is part of the Strategic Energy Technologies Information System.
This initiative will support cities and urban regions in taking ambitious and pioneering measures to progress by 2020 towards a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions through sustainable use and production of energy. It will require systemic approaches and organisational innovation, encompassing energy efficiency, low carbon technologies and the smart management of supply and demand. Importantly, measures on buildings and building management systems are among the main components of the initiative.
New way of thinking Supply and demand is the key factor here. For instance, in the future, a smart city will want to know how much energy is necessary to make a building function. It’s new way of thinking and its why the time is right to start considering how the connection between a BMS (building management system) and the outside world can be best facilitated. At present, a BMS might typically utilise one room sensor, another for the lights, and little else. However, sensor prices are dropping fast, falling to the tune of around 30% in the past few years alone (2). In combination with lower installation costs (thanks to wireless technology) and the fact that a Wi-Fi module can be picked up for a couple of pounds, and it’s easy to figure that more sensors can be deployed to measure more places within a building. In turn, this will deliver a greater amount of information, some of which could be used to help paint the supply and demand map. Sure enough, the information won’t be pinpoint, but it doesn’t need to be. To help illustrate, a good analogy is an App such as the popular WhatsApp Messenger. This uses sophisticated analytics to know, for example, that if a user types “sounds” that the next word is likely to be “good”. It knows this because it has observed that many of its users write “good” after “sounds”. The technology focuses on the most commonly occurring word, ignoring the anomalies, in order to help its customers produce quick messages. The same is working for BMS: with more data available, measurement doesn’t have to be exact, only just good enough.
Priva is among many technology providers thinking long and hard about the cloud and the benefits it might offer customers. The current vision at Priva is to engage with large providers of cloud-based services, such as Microsoft. There are many reasons for this: one is to leverage their infrastructure; and another relates to security.
Again, it’s a slightly different way of thinking but one that also works particularly well for cloud-based solutions. It will be necessary to use the high computing power of the cloud to crunch the big numbers and algorithms instantaneously and ignore the oddball information, thus delivering more accurate, real-time access to building performance. If this sounds expensive, the
able to deliver solutions tailored to individual requirements but also to international regulations. To see what all this might look like requires imagination. However, anyone thinking that the smart cities of the future will each have a huge ‘dashboard’ pulling together data from different sources, is probably wide of the mark. Many building
suggestions such as “please change the PID settings”.
Indeed, the possibilities are almost endless and represent a real step-change in the way buildings will be managed in the future. Today, once a building is commissioned the installer will often not return for another 5-10 years, and then only to change a faulty sensor or pump, for example. Furthermore, in the experience of Priva, the BMS control strategy is never changed in 90% of installations. This is despite the fact that buildings evolve almost constantly in terms of use, footfall and even size and shape.
Having access to data in real time therefore provides tremendous advantages, not just from an energy perspective, but regarding alarms and maintenance issues. Clearly it’s better to see these in real-time and thus anticipate and address incidents proactively, than it is to respond after they occur.
Collaborate to accumulate
Of course, making all of this happen will require large-scale collaboration. Major providers of cloud-based services will need to deliver the necessary infrastructure, while contractors and installers on the ground will continue to work closely with the customers. Technology companies such as Priva will be required to make the connection between the two. This ‘intelligent’, collaborative system will allow data to flow across enterprise infrastructure, spanning devices that gather data, delivering it to back-end systems for translation into insights and actions. It transforms the building into an active participant of the smart city, the sustainable city. Around 25 years ago the
good news is that customers of cloud-based services will only pay for what they use, so there will be distinct cost efficiencies.
Facilitating technology
Priva is among many technology providers thinking long and hard about the cloud and the benefits it might offer customers. The current vision at Priva is to engage with large providers of cloud-based services, such as Microsoft. There are many reasons for this: one is to leverage their infrastructure; and another relates to security.
Whenever the cloud is mentioned, people are immediately wary of security issues. For this reason, Priva’s thinking is that only the large providers have the power to win the battle against the hackers. Indeed, some users might even want a ‘private’ cloud, such as those in the defence industry for example. Again, the large providers will be
32 BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER AUGUST 2015
owners and managers will not want competitors to know what’s going on inside. Furthermore, an all-encompassing, easily- accessed dashboard could well present security issues of a physical kind. For instance, a smart burglar might think, “well, some lights are on but the temperature is set to 14°C”, thus providing an almost certain indication that the building is empty.
Analysing the future
Another facet to cloud-based solutions being carefully considered is the potential to host analytics, particularly relating to the performance of individual installations. For instance, this might entail not just telling a user that the temperature is too high or too low, but perhaps offering a remark such as “look at the installation in room 23, it’s not functioning as expected”, thus providing customer insight not available today. In time, it might even be possible to deliver
Top Control concept of Priva helped mechanical contractors to begin adding control technology as an integral part of their portfolio. In the not-too-distant future, Priva and other companies will help contractors introduce cloud-based solutions and systems to their services. Exactly when this is likely to happen is more difficult to answer. But one thing’s sure: it will be sooner than many expect. However, those thinking that BMS functions could be replicated in the cloud are probably a little ahead of reality. For now, it is thought that real-time applications will always run inside the building. This is because the world still cannot rely on a guaranteed internet connection 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. At some point there will be a service interruption. And because a building will still need to open its doors and switch on the lights, solutions such as a physical BMS will continue to be required at a local level.
1) Source: Intuit 2020 Report
2) Source: Business Insider / BI Intelligence
www.priva.co.uk
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