Building energy management systems figure heavily in ensuring sustainable and livable smart cities by reducing energy costs, reducing pollution (commercial buildings account for a lot of pollution—about 40%) and making the building environment more comfortable and responsive for the people working in them. But the technologies that make them work can be expensive. However, as the trend toward increased connectivity continues, those technologies advance and more options become available. For example: Council Associate Partner Intel plans to release a relatively inexpensive, easily installed IoT-based option for small to mid-size buildings this fall. We thought you'd like to know about it, and you may want to consider adding it to your list of connectivity solutions. — Doug Peeples
As the value and benefits of the Internet of Things have become increasingly apparent, new technologies and applications for them have touched more and more industries and fields, including building automation. While some would say the commercial building management industry has been slow to adopt new technology, the demand for reliable, automated building management solutions is growing and new offerings are coming to market regularly.
One example is Intel's Building Management Platform (BMP) for small and medium-size businesses. The company demonstrated its new platform at the IBcon technology and real estate operations conference in June and is expected to deploy a pilot version this fall. As Intel describes it, the BMP "...is a secure management platform that allows applications seamless access to things and the data they generate within smart buildings. The platform connects to a broad set of building systems and sensors, filters and securely transfers data to the cloud (or on-premise) servers while facilitating required protocol translations in between."
Intel's BMP was developed in cooperation with partners Advantech, Lucid and Candi Power Tools.
The target user will be small to medium-size building managers who want to take advantage of IoT technologies and energy management but are unable to pay the installation costs and have other concerns about traditional building management systems, according to Thierry Godart, general manager for Intel energy solutions, who was quoted in a Greentech Media article.
For more on building management...
The Built Environment chapter of the Smart Cities Readiness Guide offers more discussion on how buildings interact with information technology, the benefits smart buildings can bring to a city and case studies as well as other resources.
Doug Peeples is a Portland, Oregon-based writer specializing in technology and energy. Follow @smartccouncil on Twitter.
