Green building solutions – Isn’t it really about black?
Date: Dec. 22,2008
Over the past two years we have seen dramatic increase in focus on green. Whether referring to our local recycling programs, the pre-school crafts our kids are sent home with for mom and dad, or the latest widgets for our industry in building automation or efficiency.
A cornucopia of press releases, new product announcements and advertising in the local trade journals have produced a blinding wash of green pages touting the latest and greatest product which will assist you in bringing your building project or company in the green.
Interestingly enough, many of the products, at least in the building systems market have always been green, or assisted in providing building professionals, national accounts etc manage more with less. But is the latest green movement, really about being environmentally friendly, or rather keeping the bottom line in shape?
From my point of view, having been an automation and tech junkie for the last 15 years, I would suggest we can do both and more efficiently than ever before thanks to technology and some pretty cool new products.
Here is a fact which supports the argument, for interest’s sake.
The building system industry has been put front and center in the new energy and environmental crisis we’ve been in for the past few years. Much of the energy we produce using a variety of un-environmentally friendly methods is consumed after the construction of the building during the occupied phase, as much as 39% as a matter of fact a stipulated in the below excerpt from the DOE energy Data book.
“According to the United States Department of Energy 2004 Buildings Energy Data book, buildings consume 39% of total energy consumed in the United States, not including the embodied energy consumed to construct the buildings….”
(Source US DOE)
But is the amount of energy really the issue?
Well only partially but environmentally speaking no. The problem existing in the methods used to convert the energy we use from one form to another, namely the combustion of fossil fuels. And the costs associated with the types of matter we change. Sadly, without the cost component (on the rise) of the energy we use, the retrofit of power generation plants, building environmental controls, and new smart-grid techniques would not even be considered.
The fact still remains; the Green movement is really about keeping companies, consumers and others out of the red and into the black. Who would have ever though two of the three primary colors would be used to describe an economic situation!
Fortunately, the green movement has made the by-product environmentally story pretty good too. The fact that you can save money and provide more services in a building for less is pretty cool. This of course is where the technology comes into play, and makes my job at Viconics Electronics Inc. really enjoyable on a daily basis.
Here are some examples -
Viconics along with a handful of other companies have been researching the existing buildings market looking for new and interesting ways to assist building owners and operators suffering from energy cost anxiety and the typical costs associated with applying traditional automation systems which typically requires comprehensive retrofit driving up the cost of the program and lengthening the Return on investment, quite often pushing the program out of financial reach for many mid-market buildings, which account for over 75% of the North-American real-estate today.
Wireless technologies like Zigbee, a mesh network-networking layer have proved instrumental in developing the kinds of products my previous paragraph eluded to. This wireless networking technology has allowed manufactures like Viconics Electronics develop products which eliminate the need for automation communication wiring, thus allowing building networks to existing and for aging, disparate temperature control devices to be networked and share occupant scheduling and service monitoring ability.
Viconics has applied other technologies reliably being applied in other industries for years. The passive infrared motion detector is a great example of this. Viconics recently added a PIR equipped thermostat to it’s product line. This allows the active switching of temperature to a more relaxed state (standby) during occupied hours thus allowing for the incremental energy savings without sacrificing occupant comfort.
Add the previously mention two products together, and a powerful network of devices can easily be teamed to deliver not only energy savings, but shared network capacity and additional services at a lower total system installed cost.
The controls (BMS industry) are a changing place. Once controls-contractors, are now quickly re-defining themselves into energy professionals or retro-commissioning experts who diagnose high energy usage equipment or sequences within a building and apply / suggest many of the previously mentioned type products in order to reduce energy consumption and lead to a more profitable existence.
This next generation of controls professionals are hungry and eager to apply newly developed products, growing there opportunity for a new kind of economy.
What an interesting time to be involved in the new Green!