Next Generation Home and Building Automation: The Age of Thermo Regulation System and Energy Production

Simplifying the Interaction between People and their Managing Home/Building Devices Discrete industry automation continues to experience solid worldwide growth as manufacturing plants and OEM machine builders continue to invest in automation to improve agility and flexibility of operations to meet market demands. The worldwide market for discrete automation systems is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 6.8% over the next five years. Kepware Technologies, the global leader in communication software for automation, reports annual shipments of its automation communications software have exceeded 100,000 units and that number is continuing to grow rapidly due in part to its OPC and embedded device communications experience in the building automation industry. According to ARC Advisory Group, the building automation market is forecasted to grow to over $23 billion in 2011. Digital Domus, leaders in office and building automation, design sophisticated building automation systems and offer unique solutions based on open industry standards with Internet technology at its core. Most recently, Digital Domus delivered a solution for achieving energy efficiency using its control system and computerized, intelligent network of electronic devices, designed to monitor and control thermo regulation systems and an energy production system. "Our customers have been able to drastically improve the operational efficiency in their building and home automation systems. This is being accomplished through a continuous connection to the valuable information within their environments," says Alessandro Fiorino, R&D Chief and co-owner of Digital Domus. Homeowners and operations personnel, regardless of their location, are instantly notified of fault conditions in the building automation system. They are able to access, view, and control the process using a standard Web browser with an extensive user security model over an Internet or Intranet connection. Automated home systems are becoming more prevalent as today's building owners look to cut energy costs, increase building security, and increase control over their surroundings. Home automation companies are investing in systems that go beyond automating thermostats, but rather controlling air quality, solar panels, and geothermal (among others). For example, Digital Domus developed and implemented a home/building automation application for Giuseppe Re, the principle at Riso Italia s.a.s. for the purposes of controlling and managing a thermo regulation system and an energy production system within a multi-level office building and a two-floor home. Digital Domus configured a turn key control application to handle a thermo regulation system and an energy production system in the multi-level office building and a two-floor home. Requirements included providing the customer with the ability to supervise and control all systems with a simple graphical interface (as well as to implement the logic into the PLC network)." "The two connected buildings had to be certified "A-rated" based on the Italian laws for energy efficiency," said says Marco Comello, co-owner of Digital Domus. "Our system is extremely end-user friendly and can easily remotely controlled via a Web Browser or simply through Remote Desktop systems." Digital Domus decided to use two Allen-Bradley MicroLogix 1400 PLCs connected by a standard TCP/IP LAN. One PLC controls all interactions between the heat sources (such as solar roof panels and geothermal pumps) and the under floor heating system. It regulates the water pumps for all three floors based on the user's input for each floor. The first PLC also controls the air exchange system, thus minimizing heat loss and increasing the building's energy efficiency in the process. The second PLC interacts with the first in order to gather energy and water system status data. It also controls both the irrigation and dust extraction systems. The irrigation system is completely automated and allows the user to select the terrain humidity and preferred irrigation hours. After reading the terrain humidity, the PLC logic decides when to turn the water pumps on and off. The centralized dust extraction system controls and warns the user about any failures and errors that may have occurred (such as dirty filters and clogged pipes). The data collected by the PLCs is recorded on a 1U rack mount server running KEPServerEX and Digital Domus' Digital Supervision software. The Digital Supervision software supports open standards (such as OPC Data Access) that allow it to interact with Kepware's KEPServerEX's Allen-Bradley OPC server. KEPServerEX handles communications between the Allen-Bradley PLCs and Digital Domus' OPC Client Software. Digital Domus also provided two in-wall mounted touch screen panels, allowing the user to control the system through temperature adjustment and more. "The system is ready for expansion as well, in part because KEPServerEX is built on a single OPC Server architecture that supports hundreds of protocols and thousands of devices, says Moreno Comello, co-founder of Digital Domus. "Kepware's Allen-Bradley OPC Server enabled Digital Domus to complete the project with minimal effort and zero pain: saving them time, effort, and money." Half the houses and buildings being built today are equipped with some kind of automation. Today, the terms "smart home" or the "intelligent buildings" are becoming pretty common. Digital Domus understands home and building automation as well as its dependability on communications protocols created to control various electrical and electronic systems in a house. Kepware Technologies, through the thousands of devices and hundreds of protocols it supports, is seeing a paradigm shift in the building/home automation industry in terms of the amount of systems that can be monitored and controlled with the two main benefits being reduced energy costs and better overall efficiency. Return to Kepware Case Studies Page »»