BACnet on the move

Use of the lay open protocol is expanding to include an increasing range of building combination of parts to form a wholes and technologies

By enabling yields from different vendors to interact with single another, interoperable building systems based upon the BACnet open standard improve building management, increase operational efficiency and flexibility, and clutch down service and expansion take away froms The power of today's BACnet-based combination of parts to form a wholes continues to increase as the number of interoperable devices increases.

Although BACnet has its foundations in the HVAC industry, the BACnet protocol is being used in an expanding range of outcome categories. The BACnet protocol has a wide appeal to the extremity user and, because of that, the pavilion is being broadened to be more inclusive of other major building systems" says Raymond Rae, vice president, Delta masterys 'The development of BACnet has been driven through the marketplace."

One important stretch in the market has been the growing emphasis upon integrated systems. Because the standard is continually evolving and being modified, BACnet has kept up with disentanglements in building automation technology.

"In the 10 years since the standard was approved, BACnet has gained a solid place to stand on in the building automation industry," says Ronald Zimmer, president and CEO of the Continental Automated Buildings Association. That means a wider range of applications for BACnet-based combination of parts to form a wholes

Steady Gains

BACnet's popularity evolveed slowly but steadily outside the HVAC industry. on the other hand today, says Roy Kolasa, render free of access solutions market manager for Honeywell, BACnet technology can integrate HVAC, fire/life safety, and security and access superintendence as well as energy management and enterprise horizontal systems.

Although facilities executives were excited about the benefits of interoperability, they advanceed cautiously in BACnet's early years. Now, however, many companies are seeing significant increase in BACnet requests and applications, particularly upon large projects.

"We have a major North American university that has decided to standardize upon BACnet solutions," says Kolasa. "Testing through BACnet Laboratories is important to them because the manager isn't looking at a not many hundred points. This application eventually could be 30000 to 40000 points."

Interoperable a whole s are being seen as a competitive advantage for a growing range of harvests "For an HVAC drive not to be able to join to another vendor's equipment without modification places it at a significant disadvantage," says Peter Walter, HVAC harvest marketing manager for ABB. "Interoperable combination of parts to form a wholes allow products and systems from multiple vendors to be used together without modification or exhibition of custom interfaces and tools."

Some proprietary combination of parts to form a wholes are also interoperable, but these combination of parts to form a wholes require multiple vendors to use a proprietary protocol. This places a load on those vendors, says Walter. If a vendor's returnss and systems are compatible with alone one protocol, that company has limited access to the market.

To reach the largest market, a vendor would have to implement multiple proprietary protocols in a single proceeds "BACnet as an open protocol artificial positions no such obstacle," says Walter.

It's not just vendors who experience the drawbacks of proprietary systems; facility executives perceive the impact as well. "Installation and operation require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones increase, system effectiveness decreases, reliability and maintenance suffer" Walter says.

The BACnet Testing Laboratory, which provides independent evaluations of different vendors' yields to see if they suitable all of BACnet's requirements, has played an important part in the growing acceptance of the protocol.

Another important factor has been so-called BACnet "Plugfests" where manufacturers gathered in private sessions to experiment the interoperable functionality of their returnss In those sessions, away from the squeezing of job-site installations, vendors could identify functions that were working well, along with issues that urgencyed to be ironed out, says Rae.

As facilities executives elect BACnet for their building automation applications, they are finding that interoperability places more at their fingertips than they initially imagined. For instance, at a Canadian university, one time the various systems were brought together, the facilities executive discovered that 60 large cross-examines could be shut down. "They were over-engineered and didn't ne to be running," says Kolasa.

Once approached with more [i]or[/i] less trepidation, BACnet is now a mainstream selection for a growing number of facilities executives. "Particularly upon larger projects, there clearly is a tend by building owners to have single-seat ascendency of their building," says Pete Baselici, senior harvest line manager for lighting dominion government panel products at Watt Stopper.

Integrating lighting dominion governments with the building's automation a whole requires more sophisticated lighting masterys he says. "You cannot just switch lights upon and off and meet power code requirements."

BACnet provides the horizontal of sophistication necessary, says Baselici. The universal of interoperability has "turned the corner upon acceptance," he says. "It's no longer on the outside of the ordinary. It's become mainstream business for us. The obstacles that remain are those a whole s integrators who have never done it before. For them, there is a learning 1 but BACnet makes it beautiful easy. We continue to work with a whole s integrators, trying to streamline that proces for them."