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Mechanical Systems and Controls Group
BFRL Mechanical Systems and Control Group and Utility Integration Research
The Mechanical Systems and Control Group is providing leadership and the technical basis for enabling utility integration with commercial buildings as part of our project to expand, certify, and demonstrate the BACnet protocol. Our focus is on collaboration with the utility industry to develop technical standards for automated communications to enable building automation system participation in the smart grid. Besides this, we have been leading within the BACnet committee to develop the BACnet protocol to support distributed load control and meter reading.
BACnet Utility Integration Working Group
In our leadership role on the BACnet Utility Integration Working Group (UI-WG), we are working now with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Demand Response Research Center (DRRC) and other partners on a standard for automated demand response to allow buildings to receive web service based messages from utilities and to react to those messages. These communications include: critical event and other notifications, price signals, automated bidding for generation (or for load shedding), meter reading, energy usage history, and likely others. This will allow energy service providers to interact with any building independent of which vendor’s building automation system (BAS) is in use, and likewise let any building communicate with any utility without a utility-specific interface. The basis for the communications is BACnet Web Services. We are simultaneously working to expand BACnet to meet the communication needs of our utility partners.
Where utility integration efforts are headed
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (December 2007) was driven by the growing national interest in reducing US energy consumption and carbon footprint, and Title 13 of the Act specifically addresses the Smart Grid with responsibility given to NIST to aid in the federal coordination of standards and protocols that will enable the smart grid evolution. The Mechanical Systems and Control Group sees buildings as a key component of the smart grid, and the incorporation of IT into BAS will bring about a revolution in the BAS industry as building automation systems move from stand-alone HVAC systems to intelligent, automated systems that are integrated with other facility business systems, off-site partners, and responsive to the electric grid itself. Our group will continue to be active in enabling building automation system integration into the smart grid as we work on the technical challenges for standards-based communications inside and outside of BACnet.
Recent results:
- Integration of BACnet web services into the CA utility industry demand response standards initiative Demand Response Automation Server (DRAS) lead by Lawrence Berkeley Lab (work in progress).
- Publication (ASHRAE Journal, Apr 2008) of “BACnet for Utilities and Metering" which provides an overview of the capabilities in BACnet that enable interaction with utilities and meters to allow effective load management.
- Organization of and presentation at a roundtable at the November 2007 GridWise Interop meeting with the goal of bringing together utility and building automation industry stakeholders to discuss demand response standards issues related to moving toward an interoperable smart grid.
- Report on the BACnet utility automated real-time price demonstration at Georgia Tech published in ASHRAE Journal, “BACnet at Georgia Tech", Nov 2007. The demonstration in summer 2006 showed significant power savings based on automated temperature setback in response to real-time price signals.
- Presentations at the GridWise Dallas workshop and to the GridWise Architectural Council on role of BACnet in utility-building interactions (April 2007)
- Publication of the Load Control object as Addendum 135-2004e to the BACnet standard (March 2007 final approval)
- RTP messaging proposal for utility to BAS communications, and input on scenarios for participation of commercial buildings with the grid, were submitted to OpenAMI for discussion (2006).
- Publication of the Structured View object as Addendum 135-2004d to the BACnet standard (June 2006 final approval)
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Last updated: 4/28/2008