Smart buildings influencing the living environment

1. Smart buildings influencing the living environment Neeme Takis Rakvere Smart House Competence Centre Uniflex Systems, ITvilla -> BaseN Baltics neeme@takis.ee

2. Content • What's important inside a smart building? • Which techniques to use in • improving occupants' comfort, • achieving energy savings, • avoiding damages, • increasing security • What are the known problems and likely development paths?

3. What’s important? • A smart building should • improve occupants' comfort, • achieve energy savings where possible, • avoid or reduce damages by sending warnings • increase security compared to the traditional. • How? • Using the cheapening power of communication and computing we have at our reach today • Forcing the subsystems to work together, not independently (or even against each other)

4. Improving comfort.Control Quality • Get rid of open loop • Heating example: most of the installed water based heating systems are primitive, setting the on-flow temperature according to the current outdoor temperature (not interested in the actual result at all)

5. Improving comfort.Control Quality • If the actual result is not measured by the control system, then no disturbances from the sun radiation or wind can be compensated • Room thermostats are common to take actual temperature into account, but due to the thermal inertia the result of their action is a fluctuation around the setpoint temperature

6. Improving comfort.Control Quality • The solution: closed loop control • Single loop for simple cases

7. Improving comfort.Control Quality • Cascaded loops for real life (with limit settings)

8. Improving comfort.Control Quality • Use predictive information • Weather forecast can be used well before the significant change in the outdoor environment conditions, for time shifted • change in the setpoints • heating stopping before the outdoor temperature increase • The amount of time shifting depends • On change direction • On building parameters (heat losses, installed power of heating) • On “step height” of the outdoor temperature drop or increase

9. Achieve savings. General • In some cases improving the control quality will already result in energy savings as well (by avoiding unnecessary heating) • Other things to do • Eliminate the unnecessary energy spendings • like simultaneous heating and cooling… • Use the hourly tariff and time-shift the electricity consumption peaks if possible • washing the dishes in the cheapest hours • storing the heating energy into a tank wisely • Switch off heat pump during peak hours if possible

10. Achieve savings. Dishwasher example • There are no diswashers (to my knowledge) that can find the cheapest hour on their own • But they all continue after the power break from where they were • So start the washer and press a button (actual or virtual) to stop the process • Power will be returned on time to use the cheapest possible time to be ready with the washing before the next morning

11. Achieve savings. Heat pump example • With air-to-air heat pumps the efficiency of the pump depends on the outdoor temperature (may even drop below 1 during cold weather!) • Depending on the availability of other sources of energy (gas, wood, direct electric heating) it may be reasonable to switch between them depending on the hourly prices on electric energy • …Or just switch off the heat pump during the peak hours.

12. Achieve savings. Direct heating example • If a storage tank is in use for nightly heating, replace the primitive day/night tariff switching or simple timer based control with a price-aware solution • Estimating how much heat energy is needed next day, charge the tank with heat energy during the cheapest hours • Charge to the needed level only (not more)

13. Avoiding damages. Water leakage example • Water leaks are costly and hard to detect • Water can make more harm than fire • Water detectors cannot be installed everywhere • A water meter with good (1 liter) resolution will help, if (any of the following) • the water consumption pattern is known • building occupancy is know • movements in the rooms can be detected • Some decision-making power is needed. Doable.

14. Avoiding damages. Equipment monitoring • The increased relative to the historical average (and working conditions) energy consumption of one or another device may be a signal of • Improperly closed refrigerator door • Loss of cooling agent in the cooling system • Decreased efficiency of pumps or filters • A professional can see the abnormalities and raise warnings by looking at the trending graphs • The building automation system should do the same based on historical and current data

15. Improving (access) security • The traditional approach – armed or not • A better approach - always on watch • Analyze the movement and door/window position sensor data - not independently as before, but by combining and comparing with signals from the other sensors • Instead of the primitive zone violation signal the legal and illegal situations and/or movement tracks can be detected in real time

16. How? The main problem: interoperability and fragmentation (1) • Lack of systems interoperability standards • BACnet, LonWorks, KNX or other aging protocols are not well suited for interoperability • Several other protocols competing • Current M2M efforts are fragmented • Competing technologies promoted • No reuse other than basic networking • Certain conflict between the traditional and IoT automation way of thinking • Including local vs centralized vs distributed approach in functionality, data storage, decision-making, configuration, optimization, security

17. How? The main problem: interoperability and fragmentation (2) • Traditional approach: separate systems • Access control • Fire alarm system • Computer network • Phone network • Lighting control network • Utility meters network • Building automation network (if exists) • Ventilation subsystem • Heating subsystem • Cooling sybsystem • Each of the systems • need special knowledge • will fail without maintenance sooner or later

18. How? Using the power of communication and computing • IoT-styled approach • Distributed I/O (input/output interfacing) • Any sensor as the information source for inputs • Any actuator as the control target by outputs • All connected to the closest I/O device • Forming a “cloud” inside the building • Control and monitoring application(s) • Using inputs and generating the outputs • Using data from external servers • Feeding data to extrernal servers (incl monitoring!)

19. How? ...working together • Possible (over the subsystems) within both traditional and IoT-styled approach • Traditional: add an integration gateway to talk to all subsystems (in their preferred language) • Case per case custom made software • Limitations from the subsystems to account • IoT styled: the software has access to anything, can do anything • Easy integration, data reusing, even self-learning • Risk to affect everything by a single software bug! • Data/comm security to be taken to a new level (compared to the traditional systems)

20. IoT will change the game • Everything is connected • The challenges • get the data in an interoperable format • break the vertical data silos • harvest the data across domains • Consumer IoT – mostly wireless • also has to deal with the wired legacy of KNX, Mbus, DALI, etc • Industrial IoT – mostly wired • has to deal with the legacy using specialized protocols like LonWorks, DeviceNet, ProfiBus, CAN, Modbus, etc.

21. Bus vs Broker • There are two dominant architectures for data exchange protocols: • Bus-based • Messages to be delivered directly to the receiver • Broker-based • The broker controls the distribution of the information (including storing, forwarding, filtering, prioritizing) • The client may switch between the roles of publisher and subscriber

22. Message vs Data - centric information distribution • Message centric • focus on the delivery of each message, regardless of the payload data • will likely force to process all skipped messages (with already outdated content) after a communication break • Data-centric • Focus on delivering the meaningful / currently valid data instead of all messages • Updates the known content with the last values only after a communication break (possible history loss)

23. Some protocols to be present in the future

24. Choices for the consumer • Select, buy and connect the components • the outcome is quite limited unfortunately • DIY approach (based on Arduino, Raspberry Pi, …) • Takes time, some things are great and/or unique, but many things never get ready • Nice hobby, but the outcome is not a product to sell • a lot more than a working prototype is needed for business • Industrial installation • The smart properties installed by the professionals, possibly within the building process • Similarities with the car industry…

25. Offerings fromrelated companies • BaseN Corporation OY (www.basen.net) • Big Data monitoring system, 800k transactions per second received and stored currently. Data network and utility measurements (latter for dwelling houses). • Uniflex Systems OÜ (www.uniflex.ee) • UniSCADA as a Web-based monitoring and remote maintenance system, able to replace the traditional SCADA systems, compatible with well-known IT-monitoring tool called Nagios • ITvilla OÜ (www.itvilla.ee), now Basen Baltics OÜ • Integrator / solution provider for automation systems • Manufacturer of industrial Linux-controllers and flexible I/O modules

26. Thank you for your attention! • neeme@takis.ee, +3725010066