In view of the global climate situation, the pressure to operate buildings and spaces in an energy-efficient and sustainable manner has increased significantly in recent years. In addition to regulatory requirements, economic factors (e.g. the requirement from investors to only invest 'green') or concerns about a company's reputation among employees and the public are also having an impact.

Intuitively, it is clear that digitalization can provide support here. I would like to briefly outline exactly how in the following. The central role that the building operating system plays here becomes clear.

Classic control technology - only smarter

Control technology has always helped us to set a desired condition (e.g. sufficiently warm or illuminated rooms) so that it exactly matches the determined requirements (e.g. a temperature setpoint).

While lighting works directly via light switches or motion detectors, ventilation and even more so heating require a certain amount of 'start-up' until the control circuit has reached the desired state. Optimizing this process means optimizing energy consumption. Control technology has made great progress here in recent decades with adaptive control systems, grey box models (e.g. for the surfaces to be heated) and others - and this is independent of IoT and digitalization. A comprehensive BIM model of the building with information on room geometry, window areas and the materials used, which is essential for digitalization, certainly also helps to improve grey box models and thus calibrate the 'step response' of the control system, which the control engineer must assume in order to optimize the control loop.

Holistic energy transparency
Thanks to digitalization, especially the 'digital twin' of the building and the storage of system, sensor and usage data in the 'data lake', it is now possible to compare data from different systems and technologies with each other. What was the utilization of the space and the flow of people in the building and how were heating, ventilation and air conditioning controlled? Ventilation and air conditioning controlled? What are the main drivers of consumption? Is my flow temperature set correctly? Can user behavior be used for control or even be changed to improve energy efficiency? Are my office and parking areas really needed, or are they heated, lit or ventilated beyond requirements? The building operating system provides dashboards and analysis tools for the asset or corporate real estate manager and enables the definition of KPIs and scorecards for the continuous improvement of defined targets. By analyzing the total stock of rented or operated space, best practices can be determined and rolled out in retrofits or new builds.

Preventive maintenance

The analysis on the 'data lake' of the 'digital building twin' also shows whether the designed systems actually work as planned. Is their configuration correct? Are components perhaps faulty? Here, products such as aedifion for primary systems in building technology or Simplifa for elevator systems can analyze the behavior of the systems and identify suboptimally configured or faulty system components and report them to the building operating system. The building operating system in turn initiates maintenance tasks, forwards them to the service technicians and helps the technicians to rectify the problems by providing the technicians with problem descriptions and supporting documents, guiding them to the relevant systems using indoor navigation and, if necessary, granting them access to the systems via electronic access control.

New control mechanisms

Human intervention is still required for analyses via dashboards and for preventive maintenance - either for the analysis itself or at least for the elimination of machine-detected problems. However, it is desirable to have as much fully automated and therefore cost-effective and reliable control as possible with fast action. The building operating system can set up control loops in areas that are not accessible to conventional control technology. If, for example, a parking barrier or a separation system registers the arrival of an employee or guest with a specific destination floor in the building, not only can the elevator be called with a corresponding destination selection to increase comfort for the person concerned, but the ventilation system for the area in question can also be activated if the person arriving is the first person in the area. Much more broadly, room or workstation bookings can be used to predict the periods in which an area will be used and the flow temperature of the heating system can be adjusted accordingly. There is potential for optimization and savings in the double-digit percentage range here. It is not necessary to rely solely on booking data: by constantly monitoring usage, booking and weather data and depending on the time of day and season, a neural network can make even better predictions and adjust systems even better.

Scalable rollout of measures in the portfolio

Despite the high pressure to act in the area of energy efficiency, portfolio holders are afraid of the costs associated with optimization. This can only be countered by enabling scalable and cost-effective approaches for rolling out the entire package of measures across the portfolio. The building blocks for this are a powerful building operating system, additional sensor technology that can also be easily installed in retrofits (e.g. for capacity measurement or sub-metering) and, finally, integrators who can implement such approaches efficiently and cost-effectively. Together with its hardware, software and integration partners, Thing-it carries out such rollouts on a scalable basis - be it at the global locations of companies or in the portfolio of an asset manager.

Control Engineering 5.0

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