ENERGY MANAGEMENT TAKE CONTROL
The once-separate markets of building control and energy management are merging to bring the smart building to life, cut consumption and
lower fuel bills. Alan Hickman, Managing Director at Carlo Gavazzi UK, argues that the two-wire bus system brings the best of both worlds, offering a rapid and cost-effective install that encourages optimisation of energy consumption.
Are building automation and energy management different disciplines? I would argue that the two technologies are rapidly overlapping and ultimately will become one. Indeed, the integration of these two technologies is becoming paramount.
Although the fundamental foundations are pretty much defined, the technology, and the ways you can gather data and control the building, is growing exponentially, driven in part by energy legislation, corporate social responsibility and the desire to cut fuel bills.
At Carlo Gavazzi, we have always had a foot in both camps. When Carlo Gavazzi entered the energy management market many years ago, the sector was driven by systems integrators and panel builders incorporating metering on the primary incomers to measure what was happening within the building. Data acquisition systems evolved so that you can gather all that metering data, analyse it and report on it; thus the energy manager was born.
The other side of the business is building automation. This is driven by controls systems houses, incorporating building management systems (BMS) to control and integrate the lighting, air conditioning and other building services.
Increasingly, we are seeing BMS companies offering energy solutions and the energy management providers diversifying to offer small- to-medium controls solutions on single and multi-site applications. The overlap is becoming quite considerable as awareness among end-user clients grows.
20 | TOMORROW’S FM TWO-WIRE BUS
DRIVES FORWARD A simple, two-wire bus system, such as Carlo Gavazzi’s Dupline® system, offers the best of both worlds, and offers many advantages over conventional solutions. In typical building automation systems, each data point needs to be wired back to the direct digital controller (DDC). This complicates the installation, particularly in applications with widely-distributed data points.
“INCREASINGLY, WE ARE SEEING BMS COMPANIES
OFFERING ENERGY SOLUTIONS.”
The Dupline® two-wire bus technology significantly simplifies the field level wiring, eliminates expensive wiring home runs and saves money on installation costs when compared with traditional device-to-DDC solutions. Furthermore, the significant installation cost reduction is achieved
without increasing material cost due to the reduced need for DDC inputs and outputs (I/Os) and standard sensors.
Two-wire bus systems reduce commissioning time and offer the possibility to integrate HVAC and lighting controls, for example, at the field level – one network, two solutions. Systems are based on bus-powered sensors and small I/O modules. The cost savings of such a decentralised I/O solution can be considerable.
FLEXIBLE, MODULAR
AND EXPANDABLE The beauty of a two-wire bus system for smart buildings is that it can be expanded by simply extending the bus cable and adding extra I/O modules. This means it is truly flexible and modular, again saving on the cost of any future expansion and accommodating any last-minute changes.
Carlo Gavazzi’s Dupline® two-wire bus system provides many other advantages too. Unlike RS485 based solutions, Dupline® can be wired using free topology for the cable, including ring, star and so on. The cable does not need to be screened or twisted and it can be run next to power cables without fear of interference. Many of the field devices are powered by the bus itself which simplifies the installation by removing the need for additional power supplies.
The Dupline® system perfectly accommodates the convergence of building automation and energy management. The latest generation of Dupline® employs a BACnet gateway to connect to energy meters - all data points from these and the Dupline® network are automatically converted into BACnet objects, ready
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