From the family

Dearest BAC Cave readers:

The family of Bill Swan regrets to inform that he passed away Saturday June 4th at John Muir Medical Center in Concord, CA. His illness was unexpected, but his passing was peaceful and in the presence of his family. He is survived by his parents, his wife Kathleen and two daughters.

*Update*
A memorial service is scheduled for all who would like to attend, Wednesday, July 6th at 11 a.m. at St Bartholomew's Anglican Church located at 14821 Avondale Road NE, Woodinville, WA 98072.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you all for your kind words and well wishes.

An Internet Address for Every Light Bulb

An interesting story here about the increasingly pervasive Internet, in this case individually controlling lights.  Consumer-oriented it seems, and at least they have thought about security issues, but it's not clear that it will be integrate well, if at all, with a commercial building automation system or, worse, with an energy management system as described in a Smart-Grid-related whitepaper from the EIS Alliance, titled The Customer Energy Management System (CEMS) for commercial, residential and industrial buildings/consumers.  I invite you to take a gander (look) at the paper.


Watching the development of BACnet's lighting control extensions, it's clear to me that while one can easily do "On -- Off -- %FullOutput", there is a whole lot more to lighting control than can be conveyed via a simple Android app.  And that's even before you try to go beyond individual control of each lamp -- think about lighting up the house on the way home from the airport, or at least the path from the garage to the bedroom (so I don't have to to flip switches with both hands full of luggage).  There aren't enough stoplights between SeaTac airport (SEA) and home for me to turn on the requisite set of lamps remotely, one by one, enroute.


What these folks are doing is something to watch, certainly, but it doesn't seem to me to be the full answer.


And I hope their power control devices are more robust today than the X10 devices sold in the early 1970s; the vulnerability of the old X10 semiconductors (SCRs/Triacs) to filament-lamp-short failures is the main reason I've never installed X10 in any of my residences.

Plug(fest) 'n Play

(Or "Bowling for BACnet")

It wasn't all work during the BACnet plugfest in Saarbrücken -- the organizers arranged an evening out for the group at a nearby bowling alley. Something quite different from previous plugfests. From the pictures it looked like it was fun, but I had to bow out due to jet lag. (Many thanks to Frank Schubert for the report, title suggestion and photos.)
But now it's over and I'm back in the office (for a couple of days) with reports to write. It's not close to a major airport but I would not be unhappy, though, if we returned to Saarbrücken for the next plugfest -- or a BIG-EU meeting.

Romantische BACnet

I have to admit, the North American BACnet plugfests, aka "LAN-parties" or "Interoperability Workshops" where representatives from BACnet manufacturers bring their devices (existing, new or still in development) to test with each other in a closed, cooperative and constructive environment, have been nothing like the one this week in Germany.

I will admit up front that, like most Americans, I had never heard of the city of Saarbrücken in northwestern Germany. The travel guides I read barely even mention it; all I heard was "a city in the industrial Ruhr valley," so I didn't expect much. And difficulty in sleeping upon my arrival (leaving this Seattleite "Sleepless in Saarbrücken" -- but it's my fault) didn't improve expectations.

Was I ever wrong.

I had little time to tour, and from this point on it's (almost) all business, but I truly enjoyed my short walking tour around the old town yesterday, with at least a few photos of Saarbrücken with which to remember it. I hope sometime I will be able to return, better prepared.

But that's over and now we're deep into the plugfest testing at the Handwerkskammer des Saarlandes (Saarland Chamber of Crafts -- a great facility, by the way: spacious and comfortable). It's a serious event so, because many of us are competitors, we have to lighten things up a little.

One new jest centers on the general conduct of the event: the testing teams are paired up, two by two, and for a couple of hours test their products together. The tests start with a simple "Can my device see yours on the network?" and (usually) quickly progresses to more testing sophisticated interoperations involving setting up time schedules; trendlogging data; configuring, issuing and acknowedging alarms; and more. But this pairing is now called "speed-dating."

But an important part of plugfests is to foster a spirit of cooperation, and so it frequently includes a friendly dinner together for the entire group.

Frank Schubert noted last evening, following the day's "speed-dating" our intrepid band of BACneteers had settled down to a romantic ("romantische") candlelight dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant.

But now it's early morning, we have another day of "speed-dating" ahead of us, and I must go prepare. "Tschüss" (bye).

Casting our nets wider

Recent BACnet committee meetings, and this one especially, are highlighting the interactions across varied areas of technology and knowledge. The arena of IT and Internet Protocols (adding support for IPv6, for example) is one area potentially very broad as we search out our direction -- even our terminology is changing rapidly; just minutes ago BACnet-IT was jestingly renamed to BACnet "New Transport Binding" for the latest session's presentation on a demonstration project, based on the discussion & recommendations in the preceding session in the IT Working Group meeting. But this was to be expected.

A bigger surprise came in yesterday's MS/TP LAN working group meeting, on a discussion on expanding the maximum frame size for this low-cost LAN from 501 bytes to 4096 bytes. This technology has been around for some time and well understood - we thought. But IEEE's Kerry Lynn surprised me (at least) when he revealed that increasing the frame size 8-fold would increase the error rate a thousand-fold!

He referenced studies on CRC algorithms from Dr. Philip Koopman (online here), noting that there's a frequent assumption that "other have done their homework" in areas such as this, when in fact they might not have. Characteristics of the CRC-CCITT and other polynomials have been investigated; the following plot shows one result. Kerry will be providing guidance in this area.

"Energy Conservation in Existing Buildings" in public review

ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 100-2006, "Energy Conservation in Existing Buildings," is out for advisory public review until May 25th. (I downloaded a copy just before leaving the office last week.) "Advisory public review" means the cognizant committee is seeking input from the public for updating the standard.

The questions cover a broad range of issues including lighting upgrades and payback periods, commissioning (much potential here, thinking possibly of the International Green Construction Code, which provides an extensive set of specifics related to commissioning), and weather (question below), which is a current topic of discussion in our "buildings" corner of the federally-directed Smart Grid development.

Click here to learn more, and for a link for reviewing and submitting comments.

BACnet Committee in San Francisco

The BACnet Committee's spring meetings are underway in San Francisco, meeting in the Pacific Energy Center -- a facility that appears to be primarily engaged in energy-efficiency education, but also some research.  One of our meeting rooms seems oriented to demonstrating HVAC controls (but with a sign warning folks to leave the sensors alone because a research project is underway).

Thus far the meetings have been heavily focused on comments on proposed changes in recent public review, but other interesting discussions are getting underway, discussions on significant advances in BACnet. 

BACnet-2010 is published!

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

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?

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!

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 Saarbrücken, 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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

SGIP meetings underway

The Spring meeting of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel is underway, beginning with the Governing Board meeting this morning. Leading off with reports from electric utility organizations and the White House.