Friday, April 29, 2011

BACnet-2010 is published!

Hot off the press, BACnet-2010 is now available, in PDF or paper copy.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

BACnet Committee meetings next week

It's not too late, if you're interested in attending.  The BACnet committee's spring meeting will be held May 2 through May 6 at the Pacific Energy Center, San Francisco, (next to the Moscone Convention Center). Working groups will meet Monday morning through Thursday morning, and the plenary session Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, as shown below. (The acronyms for the working groups are explained here.)

See you there?

Monday, April 25, 2011

Smart Grid Virtual Summit 2011

Recently I applied to be a speaker at the upcoming Smart Grid Virtual* Summit 2011 this June, talking about "Customer Energy Management Systems (CEMS)."   These are very different animals from what the utilities also call "energy management systems," hence the "Customer" designation adopted by the EIS Alliance for their whitepaper on the same.


It appears my application has been accepted.  This will have to be on the agenda when the EIS Alliance folks meet here later this week.


* "Virtual" means it's all conducted online; a benefit considering I'm not sure where in the world I'll be about that time.

ZigBee Smart Energy Profile 2.0 review about to close

I just received a notice about the ZigBee SEP 2.0 documents posted for pubic review (here) and went to download them -- forgetting I had already done that in response to the initial announcement in March.  Still haven't looked at them -- and the review period closes tomorrow!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

BACnet preparations

With the BACnet interim spring meeting just a week and a half away, it's time to make sure everything is ready to go.  Looking over my proposal, WS-068, "Elevator Monitoring in BACnet," I found a few minor editorial corrections needed (indentations and text colors), revised them and sent them off to Dave Robin, committee chair, for inclusion in tracking documents and the appropriate meeting folders.

The "companion" (or derivative) proposal, WS-093, "Elevator Structures in BACnet," should give the Application Profiles group something to think about.  Their work for so very long has been on how (and what) to model for standard building automation devices such as variable-frequency drives and VAV controllers, but this proposal presents something different:  How to group a number of objects (Lifts, Escalators, Elevator Groups and so on) into some kind of a traversable hierarchical system that could span across devices or larger entities.

(Think "City of Hong Kong" -- "Building 123 Main St" -- "Tower 5" -- "Elevator Group 3" -- Lift 2" and you might get an idea.)

It could be a fun time in the meetings week after next.

And then I'm off to SaarbrΓΌcken, Germany, for the European plugfest the week after.  

Almost ready for that too: today I registered the Alerton devices I'm bringing with the Customs and Border Protection folks, down at the King County International Airport in Seattle.  (Until this week I didn't even know we had a "King County Airport," much less an international one!)  The officials didn't seem impressed by all the advanced BACnet technology embedded in the little plastic boxes on DIN rails.  And they didn't seem like they wanted to hear about the increased comfort and lower operational costs these little boxes could give them, or what the Smart Grid would soon do for them, or... 

Oh, well.

Mark that date (BACnet Academy London)

Right on the heels of the BACnet Forum London came the announcement of the BACnet Academy London to be held October 25, 2011.  Details soon to be available here.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

LEED for Healthcare approved

The green building newsletter world lit up this week with the announcement that LEED for Healthcare has finally been released.  It addresses aspects of healthcare facilities that were not well handled by LEED for New Construction.

Reportedly among its prerequisites are minimizing the use of potable water for cooling medical equipment, and "eliminating mercury" (does this include a prohibition on CFLs & fluorescents? -- I guess I will have to wait to see).   For the latter, I learned a new acronym we'll no doubt see more often, and not just in new LEED systems:  PBT, for "Persistent Bioaccumulative [or] Toxic" chemical.  Plus there is a new prerequisite:  removal or encapsulation of hazardoous materials.

Looks like I will have more new reading ahead, including the UK's BREAAM Healthcare along with the US'  LEED for Healthcare.  It will be interesting to see if there are elements to be included in future energy talks.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Nice photo

Thanks to my friend and colleague Frank Schubert, who has a good eye, a photo in front of the Thames last week.  Almost as chilly as back home in Seattle, but without the hail, sleet and snow.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

BACnet Forum London

BIG-EU committee meetings ended yesterday. Now at the BACnet Forum London, delivering my talk "Energy Standards and Energy Efficiency."  I don't have numbers but the turnout seems to be quite good and the interest level high.

Monday, April 11, 2011

"Travel to exotic locations..."

Big Ben (and the other major sights might be only a mile west of today's meeting of the BIG-EU
Executive and Advisory Boards, regarding BIG-EU business, but one would be hard put to tell it from here.

I usually finish the quote in the title with "... and sit in hotel meetings rooms." Though technically this meeting room is not in a hotel, it's a distinction without a difference.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

New BACnet addenda in public review (3/25 - 5/09)

The announcement is probably buried deep in the email that accumulated while I was away the last couple of weeks, so I just learned that a new set of BACnet addenda have just gone out for public review, beginning March 25th and ending May 9th. These addenda are as follows:
Addendum 135-2008ae, 2nd PR (public review)
- Physical Access Control, Access Door object, new enumerations for Door_Status and Lock_Status properties

Addendum 135-2008ak, 1st PR
- Define explicitly-required ranges for Device Instances and MAC Addresses
- specify 'abort-reason' for specific situations in Clause 5 Transaction State Machines
- Add a Serial_Number property

Addendum 135.1-2008j, 1st PR
Addendum 135.1-2008l, 1st PR
Addendum 135.1-2008m, 1st PR
Addendum 135.1-2008n, 1st PR

- Improve, clarify, revise, generalize, correct, update, replace and add tests

Addendum 135.1-2008k, 1st PR
- Add new manual MS/TP tests
Most of these, obviously, modify the BACnet testing standard, ASHRAE 135.1-2009, and thus are most likely to be of interest to BACnet manufacturers.

This is, possibly, the last opportunity for the public to review and comment on these proposed changes. If no comments are received, public acceptance is assumed and they will be published as additions to the standards. You can review and comment here.

BACnet Forum London -- still time to register

There's still time to register for the free BACnet Forum London next week, April 13th. Click here, and see you there.