There’s plenty of room for improvement in 2009.

With another new year upon us, we find ourselves reflecting on the past year’s efforts and what might have made them easier or more successful. As usual, this focus centers on the use of open communications protocols in our industry. Fortunately, open protocols are clearly a success and are here to stay – the near universal support of BACnet® (and LonTalk/LonMark® to a lesser degree) by the BAS industry is a clear sign of this success. However, as with technology in general, each advance seems to reveal the need for more advances to achieve that elusive state of perfection. What are they?

  • Interoperability for operator interfaces. As BACnet continues to build on its domination of the so-called building controller level of the market, the need for interoperability at the next BAS component up the hierarchy continues to be missing. To date, there still is no BTL listing for operator interface functionality, due to the lack of sufficient protocol support for these products in the original standard. Fortunately, the BACnet committee has been working diligently to correct this matter for several for several years; the addendum covering this issue completed its second public review in October 2008.

  • Adaptation of BACnet to Internet protocols. BAS communications with many enterprise-level applications (e.g., Utility real-time pricing and Microsoft server technologies, to name just two) requires that BACnet become better adapted to Internet protocols and not the other way around. As an attempt to make this happen, BACnet added support for Web services to Standard 2006 (called “BACnet/WS”). Unfortunately, this has not provided BACnet with what it truly needs to provide enterprise-level interoperability. Instead, a second addendum called “XML Data Formats” completed its first public review in October 2008.

  • More use of open protocols for building equipment/systems. As mentioned above, BAS manufacturers have demonstrated a near-universal support of open protocols. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the most of the manufacturers of other computerized building equipment controls and systems. These other products include the myriad of manufacturer-provided HVAC equipment controls (chillers, RTUs, etc.); fire alarm, lighting, and access control systems; and electrical systems ( UPS’s, PDUs etc.). On the surface, the support appears to be there; most of these products generally provide a BACnet, LonTalk, or Modbus communications option.
However, when you look a little closer, much of this support does not provide enough capability for the needs of an intelligent building. In particular, gateways are generally used which typically only allow for simple reading and writing of data. Unfortunately, intelligent interoperability requires the support of more complex data structures, like schedules and trend logs, and support of services like change of value reporting (e.g., data is only sent when it has changed, thereby freeing up the communication systems from the constant polling of data).

  • Better support from manufacturers and representatives. Not only is the application of open communication technology for the above equipment/systems lacking, but the customer support for the technology aspect is also lacking. The documentation that describes the communications capabilities is usually terse, incomplete, or written only for in-house use.
Further, representatives do not generally have the knowledge to provide support concerning their products’ communications capabilities or the interpretation of the documentation. We are constantly disappointed when we ask a representative for technical details of a product’s communications support (e.g., a “PICS”) along with a list of data that can be communicated. It’s amazing how many times we get the answer, “we support BACnet and all data is available.”

Let’s hope the new year yields success, or at least improvements, for all of the above.ES


Building Intelligence Group provides services for clients worldwide including leading Universities, Corporations, and Developers. More information can be found at www.buildingintelligencegroup.com. We also invite you to contact us directly atpaul@buildingintelligencegroup.comorira@buildingintelligencegroup.com.