BUILDING ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS


Cloud-based BEMS offers total visibility and control across a site


responsible for overseeing a chain of 100 restaurants or coffee shops can use a cloud-based BEMS platform to see which sites are outperforming others. If there is one specific restaurant that is consuming a significant percentage less energy than others, the manager can immediately identify this. It could be that one site has deployed additional technologies, such as connected plug sockets that give control over plugged-in device electrical loads and drive down site-wide energy consumption. Similarly, if the chain is considering


Getting ahead in the cloud


Sustainably managing the cost of operating premises requires total building energy control, and for many businesses the answer may lie off-premises – so says Steve Kenny from MK Honeywell.


Steve Kenny


Vice president and general manager of Honeywell Building Management Systems and MK Electric


buildings.honeywell.com F


it begs the question for many energy managers: which is the better option for your site?


ew things have put the need for greater energy efficiency at the forefront of business owners’ minds than the energy


price volatility of recent years. While initiatives such as EBDS have cushioned the cost impact, most businesses have simultaneously been looking to new, long-term solutions to better manage their building’s energy consumption .


One of the biggest shifts that the


industry has undertaken in recent years is an increased focus on building energy management systems (BEMS) and connected systems that can easily integrate to provide a holistic view of site energy consumption. As BEMS technologies continue to develop, they bring with them a growing wealth of opportunities for better energy management, such as by integrating visibility into plug-in device energy consumption and control over small power. It’s in this continued development of


BEMS technology that we’ve seen the rise of cloud-based BEMS platforms in recent years. And as with many cases of technologies moving to the cloud,


EIBI | APRIL 2024


The promise of the cloud Traditional BEMS setups require a physical system to be located on the premises to serve as the central source of the platform. However, in smaller sites such as local store units that operate as part of a supermarket chain, there is a lack of physical space to run a BEMS on-site. Likewise, larger sites with multiple distinct buildings on a single campus will encounter difficulties with having a single physical BEMS. It’s here that cloud-based BEMS


is developing an edge. Rather than relying on a physical system for insights into the status of a building’s key operational data, energy managers can instead use a remote gateway to manage every part of their buildings from wherever they are. For example, an energy manager might get an alert about unusual behaviour from a heating system in a large estate’s southern office block. From a mobile access point, they can then open their BEMS and view real-time


Moving to the cloud alleviates the limitations of on-premises BEMS


data on the system and control it remotely as needed. Moving to the cloud alleviates the geographical limitations of on-premises BEMS deployments, giving energy managers the full range of BEMS benefits with additional flexibility. The two key factors to successfully implement a cloud-based BEMS, however, is a secure gateway with seamless device communication. All the devices and systems active in a building will need to have a protected gateway through which to communicate site data to the BEMS, and this gateway should also be compatible with the various protocols used by building systems. Controllers based on more open frameworks, such as Tridium’s Niagara Framework, can support safe and reliable communication between devices from multiple manufacturers.


Total estate energy management The biggest advantage that cloud- based BEMS offers over traditional BEMS deployments is that it gives total visibility and control across an entire site, rather than individual buildings. This not only allows energy managers to easily compare performance between buildings to identify potential areas for improvement, but also allows central energy managers responsible for multiple sites to replicate success from one site to another. For example, an energy manager


deploying new energy management technologies across all sites in its estate, a cloud-based BEMS is an ideal platform to directly compare the performance on trial sites. This entire example is only possible with cloud platforms making BEMS feasible for smaller sites, opening entirely new energy management opportunities to businesses. If one site has deployed new technologies or adopted practices that can reduce their consumption by 10%, emulating this in other sites will collectively cause a substantial decrease in the chain’s energy consumption – and with that their operating costs. Far from being a hypothetical


example, businesses can already begin unlocking the latent energy saving potential of their sites with ready-now technologies. Cloud-based BEMS are available and give energy managers full visibility and control across multiple sites of varying sizes. Deployed in tandem with BEMS-integrated smart sockets such as MK Electric’s award- winning Connected Power solution, energy managers can achieve total estate energy management, where large systems and small power loads alike are monitored, controlled and managed remotely. As far as the argument between on-


premises versus cloud-based BEMS goes, the best option is always the one that best suits a site’s needs. Cloud- based makes BEMS more accessible to smaller premises and gives greater flexibility for energy managers responsible for multiple sites. For energy managers responsible for single buildings, on-premises BEMS can deliver the functions required to continually monitor, control and improve energy performance. The most important part of any BEMS deployment is the level of visibility it gives into building systems – if everything is integrated, no opportunities for improvements go unnoticed. ■


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